Netvort Parshas Beshalach 5770: Eating Each Day

By Rabbi Joshua (hungrily known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

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With thanks to the Almighty, beginning our thirteenth (!!!Bar mitzvah!!!) year.

In memory of my mother, Yoninah bas Tzvi Hirsch, whose twenty-ninth Yahrzheit occurs this Wednesday night/Thursday, the thirteenth of Shevat. May her memory be a blessing.


After the nation escapes the Egyptian army through the miracle of the splitting of the Yam suf, it begins to traverse the wilderness. Along the way, various complaints about the conditions of travel are made. First, at Marah, they complain that the water is bitter. Next, in the wilderness of Sin, they complain about a lack of food. God responds by proving them with quail and with manna. The provision of quail continued for one month, while the provision of manna continued for their entire sojourn in the wilderness. Interestingly, Rabbeinu Bachya writes, in his commentary to parshas Beshalach, that the manna was meant to prepare the people for the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Although we have, in the past, explained this to mean that since manna tasted like whatever a person imagined it to taste like, the people were forced to employ their imagination when eating the manna. This was important, because their imaginative faculty needed to be developed in order to be able to receive prophecy at Mt. Sinai. I would like to offer a different, less mystical way of understanding Rabbeinu Bachya, based on an idea I saw in a recent book by Rabbi Dr. Abraham I. Twerski.

Rabbi Twerski writes, in his book A Formula for Proper Living, that the manna, which came each day for that day alone, taught the people to take each day as a separate, independent unit. The Ramban says that the people began to complain about their lack of food after they had been traveling for a considerable amount of time and did not see any indication that they were reaching their final destination. They therefore thought that they may die there. The manna, which came in discreet units of one day's supply at a time, indicated to them that the proper approach to their journey was to take each day as it came, and not worry about what would happen the next day. Rabbi Twerski pointed out that this idea was used by Bill Wilson, who founded Alcoholics Anonymous in 1935, in treating recovering alcoholics. He said that if you tell an alcoholic that he can never drink again for the rest of his life, he will not be able to manage it. However, if you tell him that tomorrow is not in our control, and he should only concentrate on today and make sure that he doesn't drink any alcoholic beverages in the course of that discreet unit of time, he has a chance. Through this approach, along with the rest of the techniques used in the twelve-step program, thousands of people have been able to control their addictions over the past 75 years. This idea, however, says Rabbi Twerski, finds its origins in the way that the manna was supplied to the people in the wilderness, one day at a time.  I believe that this idea can also help us understand how the manna prepared the people for receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai.

King Shlomo teaches us, in Koheles, 2:14, that the wise man has his eyes in his head, while the fool walks in darkness. Rashi, in his commentary to that verse, cites a midrash which says that the fool looks at the entire corpus of Torah and says that it is too immense for him to ever complete. Therefore, he does not study at all. The wise man, however, says that he will study a chapter or two a day and in that way will, over time, accumulate a great deal of Torah knowledge. Torah must be approached on a day-to-day basis, just as the manna was given on such a basis. Perhaps this is also part of the meaning behind the Torah at Mt. Sinai. While the Sefer HaChinuch explains that the count was one of anticipation, to indicate how eager the people were for the arrival of the day that they would receive the Torah by making a kind of countdown until the arrival that day, perhaps another purpose for the count was to ready the people to approach Torah on a day-to day basis. This approach would help them manage the enormity of Torah, not becoming discouraged by the seemingly insurmountable task of learning it in its entirety. In addition, it would teach them that each day is of great importance and should not be wasted by involving oneself in meaningless pursuits since a day lost cannot be recovered.

The supply of the manna on a daily basis trained the people to appreciate the importance of each day in a very real way. They could not take extra manna and save it for the next day, because it would spoil. They had to go out each day and gather the portion supplied for that day alone. If they did not do so, they would simply go hungry. The prophet Amos (8:11) teaches us that days are coming when God will send a hunger in the land, not a hunger for food, but to hear the word of God. Reb Shlomo Carlebach, in his song based on that verse in Amos, said that the prophet was speaking of our generation which is hungry for Torah. The way in which the manna was supplied to the people, then, additionally taught them that their need for Torah was similar to their need for food, and that without their daily measure of Torah study, they would be left with a spiritual hunger, just as a failure to collect their daily supply of manna would leave them with a physical hunger. The manna, thus, was, in a variety of ways, an instrument of preparation for that great experience at Mt. Sinai, when the Torah was given to the Jewish people.

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