Not by Bread Alone (Eikev #2)

“Not by bread alone” is an idiom that most people know but don’t even realize comes from the Torah. Sadly, it has also become a somewhat trite expression that people use to infer a right to excess. The original verse containing these words is Devarim 8:3, in which Moshe recounts how Hashem let the people hunger so that He might provide them with manna “in order to make you know that not by bread alone does man live, rather by everything that emanates from the mouth of God does man live.” In the wilderness, Hashem gave Bnei Yisrael a very concrete means of understanding that Hashem is the source of everything. He provided them with all of their needs, right down to ever-fresh clothing.

It is interesting that God gave humankind a rather limited short-term memory. In times of want people turn to God. They cry out, plead, and cajole. What happens in times of plenty? Man claims victory over the forces of nature.

A few weeks ago, as many Jews around the world refrained from eating meat as a sign of mourning, there was a not-so-surprising uptick in conversations about the Beyond Burger, a veggie burger promoted as being incredibly close to the real thing (reviews appeared to be mixed).  Similarly, there has been a steady stream of media conversations about the Impossible Burger, which contains plant heme cells that make it “bleed” like real animal meat.  And, if I am not mistaken, at least one kashrus organization has ruled that meat made from the molecular structure of stem cells could be pareve. Scientists around the world are full of a sense of triumph. In this way, and in many others, man has created food.

This is the significance of bread. As Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch points out: “Lechem (bread) is the food ‘wrested’ from Nature and the competition of your fellow men. ‘Bread’ is the product of human intelligence mastering Nature and the world. So that ‘bread’ represents human intelligence creating the continuance of its existence by mastering nature in social co-operation.”  And even when we cut out nature and create food in a lab, it still falls into the category of Rabbi Hirsch’s abstract lechem.

One could say, without much hesitation, that Judaism is fully prepared for such an abstract culinary concept as “cultured meat,” meat grown in a lab. One of the main brachot said before eating food is “She’hakohl nihiyeh bidvaro – who brings about all things by His word.” In this one concise bracha, even the newest edible invention reflects the eternal truth.

There is an important connection between food and blessings that comes up just a few verses later in the chapter: “V’achalta vsevata uverachta…” (8:10), words many of us mumble through or race past on a regular basis during Birkat Hamazon. “And you shall eat and you shall be satisfied and you shall bless.” In a commentary based on the teachings of Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik was the following interesting insight (here abbreviated) connected to this idea:

“The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, resides with us on earth…we encounter the Shechinah continually. Yet God is not clearly revealed to us; He is hidden from view: ‘Behold I come to you in a cloud’ (Shemos 19:9) …The obscuring cloud takes on any number of guises. For the physicist, the cloud is mathematics. For the biologist, the cloud is chemical reaction (etc.) ….The cloud is any manifestation of nature or man that promotes the illusion that the world operates automatically, concealing the reality that God is responsible for all that occurs on earth…When one recites a bracha, he in essence is saying ‘Master of the Universe, You are hidden behind a cloud; no one sees you. Yet, as I drink this glass of water [or eat the Beyond Burger], I reveal Your presence. The very fact that I can eat that my body absorbs food, that I can digest…Through this recognition I am removing the obscuring cloud.”

The job of removing the cloud is never ending because human nature and modern society constantly pull the obscuring cloud back over our eyes. Nehama Leibowitz beautifully stated the lesson God was trying to provide: “Just as your progress in the wilderness was only made possible through visible miracles, so your existence in ‘the wilderness of this world’ with its ever-present serpents and scorpions is only possible through hidden miracles. Though in place of water from the rock of flint and the manna of heaven there will be here underground water, springs, rain and bread from the ground, the latter too are heavenly gifts originating in His bounty and not the product of ‘my power and the might of my hand.’”

Cellular agriculture is now being used to try to create meat, dairy, eggs, coffee, and even whisky. As what was once science fiction becomes part of our reality, the pressure of the cloud hindering our ability to perceive the Shechinah will probably grow stronger (until the light of Mashiach blasts it to smithereens!).  Being a person of faith is becoming an exception where once, even superficially, it was the norm.

It is all the more important, therefore, that Bnai Yisrael remember the manna. We must eat and be satisfied and bless. We might even eat and be satisfied and bless a “cheeseburger” that really did once seem impossible! Bnai Yisrael need not hesitate to accept new science as long as the ultimate credit is given to the Creator of All Things.

Bibliography

Hirsch, Rabbi Samsom Raphael. The Pentateuch: Volume V Deuteronomy. Translated by Isaac Levy, Judaica Press, LTD, 1999.

Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Devarim. Translated by Aryeh Newman, The World Zionist Organization, 1980.

Soleveitchik, Rabbi Joseph B. Chumash Mesoras Harav: Sefer Devarim. Compiled and edited by Dr. Arnold Lustiger. OUPress, 2018.