After leaving Egypt and entering the desert, the Israelites began to suffer from a shortage of water and food. At that time, one of the greatest miracles in biblical history occurs: God causes manna (in Hebrew “man”) to descend, a miraculous food with special nutritional properties. God explains to the people through Moses how they should behave with regard to this “food that comes from heaven”. These instructions are not technical but essentially educational. And for centuries, Jews have applied these divine instructions to the way we think and act with respect to our work and the way we manage our money and material possessions.
There are three fundamental instructions regarding the manna, all very relevant to modern man.
ACCEPTING DEPENDENCY
First of all, manna reminds us that food, what we need to satisfy our material needs, “comes from heaven”. This does not mean that we should not work to earn our bread. In fact, manna did not fall at the door of the Israelites’ houses, nor did it arrive by Amazon delivery. They had to go out of their house and put effort into collecting it. The fundamental thing is to remember that despite working and putting in the effort, ultimately, our livelihood (parnasa) is determined “from heaven”, like the manna. The farmer can work from sun up to sun down planting his land, but if God does not provide rain, he will not have anything to eat. A businessman can be very intelligent and hard-working, but his livelihood will be affected if he has an accident or becomes ill. The first lesson from manna is that work must be accompanied by Emunah, the conviction that in the end, it is HaShem who determines what I will have to eat and how much I will have or B”H have extra. Emunah is essential to face and overcome one of the most prevalent complications in the mental health area: anxiety. When we do not practice our faith, fluctuations in the economy, changes in our job, business, salary, etc. can seriously affect us. One has to go to work and make all the necessary effort to collect the manna, but to know and ACCEPT WITH EMUNA what we collect, much or little, is what God determined we should have.
THOU SHALT NOT ACCUMULATE:
In the desert, it was prohibited to accumulate manna. Each person had only to collect the amount of manna that was needed for that day. If someone collected more, the extra manna would decompose. Thus, no one compared what they had with what their neighbor had. This second lesson that we learn from manna has to do with the compulsive accumulation of material goods. Overprovisioning represents an expression of a lack of faith, a lack of appreciation, and gratitude toward the generosity of HaShem, which is not finite. Emunah consists of being happy with what one has. And this attitude towards life protects me from one of the worst psychological ailments: envy and jealousy. The segula of manna reminds me of a fundamental idea: I don’t need to look at my neighbor and think that the more he has, the less I have! The most important thing is not to have everything you want but to want everything you have.
NOT ON SHABBAT
On Friday, a double portion of manna was to be collected for Friday and for Shabbat. Why? Because the manna did not descend during Shabbat. There was no need to go out to work on Shabbat in order to have food. Every Jew who observes Shabbat knows that one can lose business and job offers by not being willing to work on the seventh day of the week. A Jewish merchant must potentially sacrifice a large percentage of sales or miss some irreplaceable offers because on Shabbat he cannot continue his business. Keeping Shabbat, as the Romans once observed, is not a commercially “convenient” idea. But, is there a better way to express my confidence in HaShem than to show my conviction that “I am not going to have more by working more than what has been determined for my family and me from heaven”? Therefore, every Shabbat, we remember the manna in the number of loaves or challot that we prepare for Shabbat and in the way we cover the challot, both top and bottom.
The segula of the manna teaches us to increase our faith in HaShem, to be more moderate in our consumerism, and to avoid material excesses.
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