Beha’alotcha
Numbers 8:1-12:16
Zechariah 2:14-4:7
Spending 40 years wandering in a desert is hard enough; now consider the culinary experience. Forty years, day in and day out, with only one thing on the menu: manna. What do we know about this substance that sustained us all those years? Certainly not its true name; we learn in Exodus 16:15 that the people call it “manna” because “they said to one another ‘what is it?’ [mann hu] because they did not know what it was.” They literally called it “what.”
We do know that it was a complete and wholly nutritious food, as people lived on this and this alone for 40 years. Interestingly (see Chizkuni 11:6), it seems to have been completely digested and did not necessitate trips to the desert outhouse. Further, in our Torah portion as well as in Exodus, it is described as being white and mildly sweet and came fresh every day. With the exception of Fridays (on which an additional portion was given for the day of rest, the source of our two loaves on Shabbat), there were never any leftovers from one day to another.
An intriguing delicacy, it might make the top of any restaurant menu as an exotic dish. Yet this was what we ate day after day, and in this week’s Torah portion the Jewish people have had enough. In the beginning of chapter 11, the people complain. “We fondly remember the fish that we could eat in Egypt … the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions … But now our spirits are dried up, with nothing but manna before our eyes.”
In response, Moses gets terribly upset and asks HaShem why he was given this burden. “Was I the one who was pregnant with this people? Did I give birth to them that you should tell me to carry them in my bosom as a mother nursing a child?” An unexpected analogy, as no one ever suggested that they were Moses’ children. He is their leader, not their parent!
Taking a closer look at the wording of the text, one notices that the opening verse describes the behavior of the Jewish people as “k’mitonninim” — “like complainers.” What does it mean, “like” complainers? They are complainers!
There is a seemingly unrelated portion of Jewish law that may shed light on the issues at hand. The Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 81) notes that once a child starts eating solid foods, one may no longer pray in their presence if their diaper is full. This halachah is cognizant of the fact that mother’s milk is digested differently, more completely and with less waste than regular food.
A suggestion based on Moses’ analogy: Could it be that manna is the spiritual equivalent of mother’s milk? Its qualities match: white, sweet, more completely digested, served fresh and wholly nutritious. And it is the only food eaten by a child in the earliest stage of its life.
To take this line of thinking a step further, note the name used for this item. In calling it “manna,” the people use a phrase essentially equivalent to that of the “simple child” from among the four sons of the Passover seder, namely “mah zot” — “What is this?” We were so young that we called things we did not recognize by names like “what.”
The Seforno comments that the people are “like” complainers but are not actually complainers. They weren’t actually having an issue, but rather were testing limits. Upon leaving Egypt, we were in our infancy. HaShem was nursing us in the form of manna. We asked childish questions in a simple manner, and tested limits.
For all that we might have been judged ingrates or criticized for our protests, the Torah cuts the Jewish people slack and describes us as only being “like” complainers. HaShem recognized that we were, after all, just children and that children do test limits.
The question remains — are we doing everything we can to understand others, as HaShem did for us?
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Oakland’s Beth Jacob. He can be reached at [email protected] .