Parshas Beshalach: Oh Food

“Mom! What’s for dinner?” Oh, how so many women dread that question. Taking care of a family seems to require making this same decision over and over and over – although many households have solved this by having a static weekly menu so that the question becomes moot. If it’s Monday, it must be leftovers…(not to ignore “taco Tuesdays”).

 It seems that in the Midbar, that “beloved” cry was transformed from “Ma” to “Mo” – “Hey Moshe, what’s for dinner? I’m staaaarrrrvvvvinnnnnngg!” Ok, really, they said: “If only we had died by God’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death” (16:3). But, we all know that if they were modern day teenagers it’s kind of the same thing because, like modern day teenagers, they weren’t starving. They hadn’t even been out of Mitzrayim that long. What they were “starving” for was a sense of security, which was difficult since, at this point, they were a very insecure people.

 Like many a modern mother, Hashem held them to the words of their complaint, that they had “sat by the pots of meat” and ate their fill of bread. Why didn’t they say that they ate meat? Why use such odd phraseology as “sat by the pots of meat”? As every human being knows, food is often about far more that the desire of our mouths. Walking into a house where a brisket is in the oven or some chicken is roasting brings one a sense of hunger, yes, but also a sense of premeditated pleasure. Food is a multi-sensory gift to our goofs, our bodies.

 The night before the mahn, the camp was covered in quail – a short statement in the Torah that is easily overlooked in the midst of the far greater miracle that was about to take place. The night before the mahn, they prepared succulent dishes that must have filled the camp with the same overwhelming pleasure as sitting by pots of meat. Good things are coming – yum, yum. It was to be their last sensory culinary experience, for the next day “there was a fall of dew about the camp. When the fall of dew lifted, there, over the surface of the wilderness, lay a fine and flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground.” The manna had arrived.

In a most fascinating situation, while the “fine and flaky substance” is first mentioned in 16:14, it is not named until pasuk lamed-aleph (31). During those 15 or so pasukim, the Toah explains the rules of manna, about the fact that it will be gathered and brought to their tents in quantities of one day’s need, about the pointlessness of holding it overnight since it would not keep, and, most significantly, about the double portion before Shabbas.  Only after a week’s worth of mahn exhibiting its miraculous measurements of precisely the right portion for each household and the wonderous double fall of Shabbas, is the heavenly “bread” named. “The house of Israel named it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and it tasted like wafers in honey.”

 After a full week, the women of nation threw up their hands. How many times could they call up nd yell “Come and get your, um, er, stuff that fell on the ground”? How often could they say, “Alrighty, seed-like food for supper!” The ground-fall needed a name and some of the oldest commentaries on the Torah note that the Torah’s use of word “the house of Israel,” beis Yisrael, means that it was the women who named the food (Mechilta).

 This is significant because it underscores the important role that women play in the spiritual life of Bnei Yisrael. As Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsh notes:

 Getting and keeping the feeling of being happy and contented with moderation, trusting in God and His providing, is above all dependent on the women of the household accepting this spirit, and on their care of and adherence to the spirit of living. It is therefore significant that it was just the women who first recognized the Manna as the gift from God to each individual of his due sufficiency, and by giving it the name Manna fixed this idea so that it should constantly be taken to heart.

 

The flesh of the quail, as pleasurable as it may have been, was fleeting because it fed the goof – thus why the complainers remembered sitting by the pots. It was a sensory seeking experience and one that often led to simply wanting more. The bread, however, they ate until they were full. They ate until they were satisfied. The Manna was equivalent to the bread they missed, to the foundation of a home. When they named the bread of the wilderness Manna, which comes, some say, from the interrogative Mah – What, they were highlighting the fact that every time one ate it, one had an elevation of the spiritual seeker in that one had to wonder at the wondrousness of what it was.

 Or perhaps even the women in the desert named it after the perpetual family call of  “What’s for dinner”….

 Wishing you all a wonderful Shabbas.

Parshas Bo – Wait, What Did He Just Say?

It would probably be a fair assessment to say that I am not alone in looking at the world today and shrugging in complete puzzlement. It feels like the last 5 or 6 years have brought a bizarre shift in both geopolitics, domestic policy, and economics. It often seems as if we are faced with the bizarre experience of politicians talking out of two sides of their mouths – saying one thing but meaning another.

“That’s what politicians do,” some of you might be saying, and the proof is right here in this week’s parsha. In Parshas Bo there is a particularly strange pasuk that easily makes one hesitate and reread to try to understand what just happened.

The parsha begins with Hashem instructing Moshe and Aharon to return to Pharoah and describe to the court the next terrible plague that is to come. They are warned, however, that Hashem will harden Pharoah’s heart so that Hashem can overturn Egypt in a way to strengthen Am Yisrael for all of our generations (note: that’s not how it is expressed). They go to the court and describe the devastation to be wrought by a terrible swarm of locust. They leave, and the court goes crazy. “Pharaoh’s courtiers said to him, “How long shall this one be a snare to us? Let those involved go to worship the ETERNAL their God! Are you not yet aware that Egypt is lost?” (Shemos 10:7). On a side note, it is interesting that this dire reaction is to the one plague that has any sense of something natural. Perhaps because they knew, from experience in life, how truly terrible a locust swarm could be…and, of course, their land and lives were already quite devastated.

Pharoah listens to his courtiers, which is in itself fairly incredible, and calls Moshe and Aharon back to the court and offers to let them go to worship Hashem in the wilderness. When he inquires as to whom they plan on taking with them, he is told “We will all go—regardless of our station—we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds; for we must observe Hashem’s festival” (10:9). Pharoah’s reaction, when read initially, is truly peculiar:

“So he [Pharaoh] said to them, ‘So may the Lord be with you, just as I will let you and your young children out. See that evil is before your faces. Not so; let the men go now and worship the Lord, for that is what you request.’ (10:10-11).

The Torah does not state any emotion on Pharoah’s part leading into his statement, and so it could seem that he is actually seeing things their way. “So may the Lord be with you.” Pharoah is invoking Hashem’s name, and it almost seems as if he is blessing their endeavor. More than that, it almost appears as if he is encouraging them when he says: “I will let you and your young children out.” It seems he is saying that everyone can go.

It is therefore rather startling when Pharoah declares that “evil is before your faces.” It seemed that only a moment ago Pharoah was accepting this request; he’d even appeared to bless them that Hashem should be with them! Thus we see that Pharoah truly knows how to speak like a politician, how to couch in his words the poison of double-speak. The Netziv remarks in Haamek Daver that Pharoah’s wording here is meant to imply that he is acting from compassion: “Pharaoh asked, ‘Who is going to provide for your needs in the desert? Will you not die of hunger?’ This is the significance of his warning, ‘for evil confronts you.’ That is, you are seeking your own misfortune by taking your little ones into the barren desert.”

Pharoah invokes Hashem’s name so that he can appear as if he is thinking of their welfare. The implication that he knows better than Hashem how to protect both Bnei Yisrael and his own people is his narcissistic vulnerability.

This pasuk can be read as a statement of sarcasm, that his first two phrases were said drenched in facetiousness. That understanding hinges on the word k-asher. K-asher, broken down, means “like that” but is generally used to mean “when.” Hashem will be with you when I will send you and your littlest ones… but that time isn’t now, with the implication that that time may be never because he was quite aware that the Israelites, if they left with their children and their flocks, would never return. (I mean, duh, why would they!)

One could, however, look at this pasuk as a critical moment. Perhaps Pharoah’s first phrasing of the pasuk – “So may the Lord be with you, just as I will let you and your young children out.” – was genuine. But Hashem has already told Moshe that Bnei Yisrael will not be leaving Mitzrayim yet. He has said outright that He will harden Pharoah’s heart. This beat, separated by a little esnachta (the trope mark that looks like a wishbone and signifies something like a period) is the moment Hashem hardens Pharoah’s heart. This is the moment that Hashem reminds the world both then and now, that there is a plan that must be fulfilled.

Do we understand why things are happening in the world today as they are? I certainly don’t. Watching the incredible rise in anti-Semitism that followed the attack on October 7^th was mind-fuddling, and it was, to me at least, absolute proof that Hashem runs the world and was fulfilling His word on what living in galus would be like. When Jews start to feel comfortable and complacent in their exile homes, the world reminds us that comfortable and complacent is not the space we are meant to be living in. When Pharoah starts to feel a tad bit of compassion for his own people and begins to relent, Hashem hardens his heart…because there is a plan. There is always a plan - it is just far, far, far too broad for us to see.

Wishing you all a beautiful Shabbas. For those in Montreal – stay warm! Be safe! For those south of Albany – stay home! Be safe!  For those of you not expecting the joys of winter…well, I may be jealous.

Parsha Shemos: Gd Knows

 Parsha Shemos: God Knows

Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Chana Zelda bat Gittel Yita, Batya Dina bas Chava Tzivia, Chaya Sarah bas Esther Leah, Moshe Aaron ben Necha Itta, Binyamin ben Simcha, and Yaakov ben Esther Malka.

 

In the first parsha of the Torah, we learn how Hashem made man in His image…and, alas, ever since then it seems that man has been trying to do the reverse – make God in man’s image. Ok, it’s a bit of a pithy thing to say, but, in many ways, not so far from the truth. Even today when Western society has moved far away from statuesque idolatry or that Greek pantheon, most people tend to have an understanding of Hashem that reflects God as they want or expect Him to be. Sometimes that is the all-loving, all-forgiving, “if I’m just a good person God will accept me” deity, and sometimes it’s the fire and brimstone deity who will punish those who cross a person’s moral line.

 

Hashem is all-knowing, of course. And Hashem does reward the righteous and punish those who deserve to be punished. The calculations for all of that, however, are well beyond our means of understanding…and understanding that is critical criteria for this week’s parsha, Parshas Shemos.  Parshas Shemos – well, indeed, sefer Shemos and, in truth everything thereafter – is a testament to the difference in how we mortals view the world and Hashem’s comprehension of all the moving pieces and His understanding of what, ultimately, needs to happen and is thus “good.”

 

The parsha opens with a recounting of the names of the 70 who came down with Yaakov to Egypt, and here we must remember that when Yaakov hesitated to come, Hashem told him it was what he should do. But was it good? We see quite quickly into the parsha that it really wasn’t what one would say is for the good because the Egyptians turned on Bnei Yisrael rather quicky once Yosef’s generation had passed.

 

One of the primary factors of the events in Mitzrayim (beyond, of course, the foretelling of the oppression by Hashem and it being the means of forging the nation) was Pharoah’s belief that he could shape his world. He wished to kill Jewish boys because an astrologer gave him a foretelling, and he believed that he had ability to thwart it. He believed that he could remove himself from infanticide by trying to recruit the Jewish midwives to do it, but their better nature could not be turned. He believed that he could ignore Moshe because, as he himself declared: He did not know Hashem.

 

In contrast, however, there is Moshe. The Torah tells us that when Moshe was born, his mother saw that he was “good” (Shemos 2:2). Of course there are lots of interpretations of what that means, but perhaps it is an allusion to his innate connection to the Divine.  Think about the fact that only his youngest years were spent in an environment of kedusha, when he was nursed in his mother’s house. The Torah only first records him interacting with any Israelites is when he stops the taskmaster from killing a slave, and he stops him by striking him with, as the Midrash tells us, the actual name of Hashem. This is an incredible level of connection for someone who had no one to teach him the ways of Israel, which makes it even more perplexing that Moshe does not immediately agree when Hashem instructs him to go back to Mitzrayim.

 

When Moshe asks Hashem what he should tell the Israelites when they ask for Hashem’s name, the response is more than just a message for Bnei Yisrael. It is a message for every person… “And God said to Moses, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh,” continuing, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’” Ehyeh-asher-Ehyah – I am that I am or I will be what I will be…

 

Moshe, with his inborn special connection to Hashem, cannot alter the path that Hashem wants to occur. None of us can. We can judge the world all that we want. We can look at individuals or whole groups of people or situations and declare that they are wrong, that they need to be different, but we are mere mortals. To be frank, we know nothing except what we see and what we feel, but Hashem… Hashem doesn’t just know everything, Hashem IS everything.

 

And while for the moment you may nod your head and say of course, it’s an incredibly difficult idea to hold in one’s mind.

 

I wish you all a beautiful Shabbas, and let us all come to truly accept that it is all Hashem.

 

Parshas Vayechi: Touching on Temporal

 Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Chana Zelda bat Gittel Yita, Batya Dina bas Chava Tzivia, Chaya Sarah bas Esther Leah, Moshe Aaron ben Necha Itta, and Binyamin ben Simcha.

 The perception of the passage of time is one of the most puzzling elements of being alive. There are days that feel unending, and weeks that go by in the blink of an eye. One can look back at a year that just passed and wonder how it is over so quickly while, at the same time, feeling like events from the beginning of the year happened in a different era. This odd temporal distortion that we all do seems to be a significant facet of this week’s parsha, Parshas Vayechi.

 For those who are fans of science fiction, the term temporal is not so mysterious, although in such reference it often is used in time travel scenarios. It is, in truth, a rather complicated word in that its essential meaning in relation to time is of something finite and specific to a set of time, but that it is used for situations inferring moving in/out of time periods shows that it rings with something far more philosophical.

 Parshas Vayechi is very much a parsha about time, but time in a very biblical framework. Everything that occurs in sefer Bereishis echoes through Jewish history yet to come but is powerful in its own time as well.

  The first section of the parsha is Yaakov on his sickbed calling Yosef and Yosef’s sons to him so that he may bless them specifically. The action is occurring in one time period, but it is an action that will affect to Jewish people for the rest of history as he adds these grandsons into the framework of the shevatim.

 The second, and primary, section of the parsha is Yaakov’s blessings to his sons, and, when read carefully, one notices here a true temporal split. Yaakov in the prophetic state of blessing his children, speaks in future, past, and present tense. Some sons are critiqued for actions in their past, while others are given hints to the future. For Yaakov Avinu on his death bed, timing had little significance, but time had tremendous significance.

 The third section of the parsha is about death and burial, which is the ultimate reminder that our time is certainly not eternal. Through his instructions for burial in Maaras Hamachpela, Yaakov is actively tying his earthly existence to the spiritual chain of his forefathers and making certain that their great accomplishments in bringing the spiritual down to earth will not be tainted.  According to numerous mepharshim, Yaakov was so specific about the burial place in order to protect it, for it was well known that Esav still felt entitled to it. It was for this reason that he specified that he had already interred Leah there – he had already prepared it in advance, with some mepharshim even suggesting that he had dug his own space in advance.  

 It is the final section of the parsha, however, that has, perhaps, the most to offer on the business of time. Yosef does not even bother to try to be buried immediately in Eretz Canaan.  He lets the royal staff prepare him in their usual fashion (embalmment), and his funeral was the done with the fanfare like one of the great nobles of the country – which he was. But Yosef is aware that Hashem has lifted the Jewish people out of any normal pattern of time or mazal, and he makes his brothers promise to take him with them when they leave Mitzrayim.

 When you really think about it, it’s a weird request. He’s going to be dead. His brothers are all older than him (except Binyamin), so they too will not live much longer… It is quite obvious, therefore, that he is not talking to his generation. In making this promise for the future, Yosef is making time fold in so that he is alerting the generations of Bnei Yisrael to come that time as we see it has little meaning. He has perfect faith that his body will not remain in Mitzrayim. He has perfect faith that redemption will come, that Bnei Yisrael will return to the land promised to them through Avraham Avinu.

 The idea of time travel is alluring and appealing. It is natural to wish to turn back time and fix the errors of our ways (whether our own or those of the distant past), and it is quite normal to harbor a deep curiosity with what the future will look like. Alas, as far as scientists have yet proven*, only Hashem has the power to truly be in all three tenses at once. Yet while we may not be able to fix the past or see the future, Hashem makes it clear that the impact of the Jewish people is rarely limited to the here and now.

 Wishing you all a beautiful Shabbas.

 

*just kidding, not comparing scientists!