Parashat Shlach Lecha, Numbers 13:1-15:41

The human being is the challah of the world.

Why is the price of bread so important? What is the value of a loaf of bread? Bread is a commodity in the consumer price index of many nations. The price of bread is used as a comparative measure of the standard of living. Are you better off than a medieval peasant? A comparison of what you pay for bread and what the peasant paid for a similar loaf will let you know. Bread lines form when wages disappear, and in desperate times the bread lines can turn into bread riots. The Speenhamland allowance system, enacted in England in 1795, was meant to avoid such rioting by supplementing the breadwinner's ability to feed his family. During the Weimar Republic in 1920’s Germany, hyperinflation raised the cost of bread from less then one mark to trillions of marks. We all know how this affected the political scene.

Because bread is such a basic necessity, its importance is more than physical or material. Lack of bread can topple governments, cause wars and mark a person for life. In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables stealing a loaf of bread to feed a hungry relative kept Jean Valjean imprisoned for years and marked him as a thief. An overflowing breadbox can keep you in power, as David demonstrated in his celebration of bringing the Ark to Jerusalem: And he distributed among all the people – the entire multitude of Israel, man and woman alike – to each a loaf (challat) of bread…(2 Samuel 6:19). Surely one of the strongest bonds created among people is by "breaking bread;" and what would Shabbat be without challah?

In the book of Genesis, bread is the result of hard work, though the description of how it is obtained is presented as a punishment accompanying the exile from Eden:
By the sweat of your brow
Shall you get bread to eat,
Until you return to the ground —
For from it you were taken. (Genesis 3:19).

As we've already seen elsewhere in the Torah, bread represents God's bounty, and the lack of bread is punishment for transgressions. For us, bread is symbolic of good times (challah) and bad (matzah), but in the Torah both leavened and unleavened bread have positive connotations and are offered to God. And if you bring a sacrifice of a meal offering baked in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes (challot) of fine flour mixed with oil, or unleavened wafers (rekikot) anointed with oil. (Leviticus 2:4)

Why focus on bread this week? After all, Shlach lecha contains the dramatic events surrounding the scouts’ exploration of the land of Israel and the report they bring back: It's a wonderful land, but it is beyond our abilities to get there. The people are powerful, and in comparison to them we're grasshoppers (Numbers 13:31). We say this not in the affectionate way the blind Shaolin master addressed David Carradine in Kung Fu. We mean that these folks are big and they'll stomp us. To paraphrase the King Fu instructor: We are not ready, Grasshopper. Okay, we've got an attitude problem and the next chapter deals with addressing it, mainly by condemning the generation that displays this attitude to perish in the wilderness.

Then we come to this morsel about bread:

When you enter the land to which I am taking you and you eat of the bread of the land, you shall set some aside as a gift to the Lord: as the first yield of your baking, you shall set aside a loaf as a gift; you shall set it aside as a gift like the gift from the threshing floor. You shall make a gift to the Lord from the first yield of your baking, throughout the ages.

Numbers 15:18-21

Food and land are tied together in the Torah. The challah, the loaf set aside as a gift, is incumbent upon us only in the land of Israel. The mitzvah we still perform by removing a measure of dough before baking is a rabbinic decree meant to insure that this commandment is not forgotten outside of post-Temple Israel.

It was only in the Middle Ages that challah became the term used for the special Shabbat bread. According to food writer Claudia Roden, this designation first appeared in South Germany. In our parasha, challah refers to a loaf. This is in contrast to other meal offerings that are in wafer form, such as the one found in Leviticus 2:4 that was cited above.

So far, challah is an offering made to God: the first yield of your baking, you shall set aside a loaf as a gift (Numbers 15:20). The term used for setting aside in the parasha is tarimu terumah. As Jacob Milgrom explains, this expression means that an item is transferred to the deity but unlike other offerings, the exchange is not "before" God, rather it is directly "to" God. (The Jewish Publication Society Torah Commentary: Numbers, 15:19 p. 122) The verb tarimu means "you shall raise." This challah, this gift to God, is no mere exchange, it is an elevation. A humble piece of dough is much more than it appears. It is our connection to the Divine.

There is an underlying reciprocity in the act of taking challah. God sustained us with manna in the wilderness; when we enter the land we, in turn,give a portion of our bread to God. The connection between challah and manna is found on our Shabbat table every week. Two challot represent the double portion of manna that fell prior to Shabbat. There are those who extend the symbolism by pointing out that the cutting board represents the ground on which the manna fell and the challah cover represents the protective coat of dew over the manna.

The rabbinic imagination found profound inspiration in the act of taking challah. Genesis Rabbah, citing Numbers 15:20, claims that God too removed challah. When did God do this? When humanity was created. The human being is the challah of the world:

Rabbi Yossi ben Ketsarta said: Like a woman who mixes her dough with water and separates challah from the very centre, so too a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth (Genesis 2:6) followed by the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7)

Genesis Rabbah 14:1

The midrashic reading of Genesis is that just as dough is formed from grains of the earth mixed with water, God formed humanity from a combination of earth and water, not merely from the dust of the ground. Humanity is more than the Pillsbury doughboy; it is challah, physically separated from the rest of creation, the most important part of creation.

The psalmist reminds us that we are little less than divine (Psalm 8:6); our lesson here is that we are more than mundane. Not just earth, not just water – it is the combination of the two that makes something so basic and so unique. In kneading dough we are reminded of our position, elevated to be God's challah.

Now this begins to make sense when we read the beginning of the parasha. We are not grasshoppers, we are the dough that rises and is separated for a Divine purpose. Since entering the land, we are reminded of this every time we bake bread; in other words on a daily basis.

In extending the mitzvah outside the land of Israel, the sages consciously or not provided a lesson in perception that goes far beyond the obvious lesson of self-esteem. We know that mitzvot turn mundane actions into holy acts, but we are not always aware of their transformative power. Remember the bread that "helps build strong bodies twelve ways?" Challah applies this to the soul. In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel: "To perform deeds of holiness is to absorb the holiness of deeds. " A tasty morsel to chew on this Shabbat.

Shabbat shalom,
MS

Parashat Bechukotai, Leviticus 26:3-27:34

It is easy to be grateful when faced with abundance; the challenge is how to keep one's faith when staring at famine.

A few years back, before we were so worried about carbs, there was a television commercial about Fred the baker whose only concern was making doughnuts 24/7. His "time to make the doughnuts" mantra assured us a fresh product all day long. Exhausted as Fred may have been, he was most fortunate to have been a baker in our technological age. Had he lived in the ancient world, he would have had much less to show for a hard day's work. Actually, Fred would have been busy growing and harvesting the grain, Mrs. Fred would have been the one for whom baking bread was a daily grind:

In the Bronze and Iron Age, bread was the staple food. Since it was prepared almost every day, bread-making was one of the main activities of a household. People in Canaan and Ancient Israel consumed between 330 - 440 lbs. of wheat and barley per year. An individual typically consumed 50 - 70 % of calories from these cereals -- mostly eaten in the form of bread.
The grinding of grain was done by hand, using a quern: this consisted of a fixed lower stone, called a metate, and a moveable upper stone or mano. The quern was made of basalt, a course volcanic stone, which was preferred for the process because of its rough surface and relatively light weight. The grain was ground on the course surface to break down the soft center of the kernel into flour. It was a very laborious process and had the disadvantage of producing basalt grit which got into the bread and gradually wore down the teeth.

Bread, Canaan and Ancient Israel,
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology

No wonder bread is such an elemental symbol in the Torah. In the beginning Adam is told By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat …(Genesis 3:19). Gritty though it may have been, ancient bread represented both the good and the bad. This imagery comes into play in Bechukotai, the very last parasha in Leviticus.

The message of Bechukotai is referred to as a tokhacha, a rebuke. Using stark images it conveys what will happen if we fulfill God's will: You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make room for the new. (Leviticus 26:10), and what will happen if we don't: When I break your staff of bread, ten women shall bake your bread in a single oven; they shall dole out your bread by weight, and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. (Leviticus 26:26)

Interesting words: ve'achaltem ve-lo tisbe'u, though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. Deuteronomy 8:10 instructs us using the same verbs ve'achtala ve'savata, When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.

Bread brings with it immediate gratification by calming a growling stomach. This is not to be confused with the instant gratification that so many of us seek today. The satisfaction derived from a piece of bread fulfills a basic necessity. The importance of this gratification is evident in a Talmudic tale. Abba Hilkiah was known for his ability to pray for rain. Once when asked to do so, he and his wife went to the roof of their house and began to pray. The dark storm clouds first formed over the corner where his wife was standing. When asked about this, Abba Hilkiah explained that he gives money to the poor but his wife gives them bread which they can enjoy immediately; hence she merited this response to her prayer. (Ta'anit 23a-b)

How then is it possible, to eat and not be satisfied? What sort of dreadful curse is this? A number of Holocaust survivors, as well as others who have faced starvation tell of those first meals after liberation. Unsure if there would be any food the next day, they hid pieces of bread. Experience had taught them to be careful and to hoard. Eating meant survival, not immediate gratification. It took time to overcome this desire to put some bread aside "just in case."

These are the most extreme situations. Yet there are other obstacles in life that have the same end result: though you eat, you shall not be satisfied. What of the person who, having survived a round of chemotherapy is informed the prognosis is bleak? What of the couple who have tried their best to make things work but the marriage breaks up and the family is devastated? What of the individual who has placed heart and soul into his work and is unceremoniously let go? All these are efforts done by the sweat of your brow where the result is you shall not be satisfied. It is easy to be grateful when faced with abundance; the challenge is how to keep one's faith when staring at famine. Bechukotai is about reward and punishment; it is very simple. Life is not. It is unsavory and seemingly insulting to view a life-threatening illness, a troubled marriage, or a lost job as punishment. In such situations it is understandable that the suffering individual may question what is happening: "Why me? What did I do to deserve this? It isn't fair!" These are occasions that result in anger towards or alienation from God.

The question of suffering is as old as Judaism. The first question asked is "why?" The book of Job argues that we cannot understand God's ways. Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) finds it useless to speculate on what is fair and unfair in life. Rather, we should do our best no matter what the circumstances. The Talmudic sages also found it difficult to provide an answer:

Rabbi Yannai said: "It is not in our power to explain the well‑being of the wicked or the sufferings of the righteous."

Avot 4:15

Looking at Bechukotai we are tempted to answer that suffering must be punishment for something. But in the Rabbinic response to suffering, "why?" is the wrong question. Instead of delving into theology, the sages tried to find a human response, asking, "What can we learn from this?" The first step is to provide comfort and support for the sufferer. In fact that may be the only response we can provide.

For the individual in pain there is no simple answer, no immediate gratification. "What can I learn from this?" may be a question that at first appears irrelevant and later may be unappetizing. It is like that ancient bread that takes all day to grind and then wears down your teeth. The process provides sustenance, not satiation. But it will keep you going until you no longer feel the need to place a few crumbs in your pocket for the next day. Given time, sustenance can slowly turn to gratification, reaching the point where suffering subsides, healing begins, and you truly feel that: When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God.

Shabbat shalom,
MS

Shabbat Pesach Seventh Day, Exodus 13:17-15:26, Numbers 28:9-25

This Parasha has been generously sponsored by Karen Teasdale.

It is a short road from gnawing on the bread of affliction to suggesting to others "let them eat cake."

Every year I am amazed with the growing array of kosher for Passover products: muffins, bagels, pasta, even pizza. This is ha-lahma anya, the bread of affliction? Even traditional matzah ain't what it used to be, now that you can choose wheat, rye or spelt matzah. Then, of course, there's shmura matzah, the traditionally watched and hand-baked item that reflects the bread of poverty in looks but not in price.

Matzah is as elemental a symbol of the staff of life as can be found: just flour and water, minus the fermentation. We are told that during the Exodus there was no time to let the bread rise; hence we omit the fermentation or leavening agent. Perhaps leaving out this one item is another symbol of leaving Egypt behind, since scholars believe that fermentation was discovered in Egypt making it the birthplace of bread and beer.

Bread was used to pay the workers' wages in ancient Egypt. Those who toiled received grain or simple loaves of bread made from flour and water. In contrast, the rulers dined on bread that contained honey, fruit and nuts. The difference between the haves and have-nots was abundantly clear in the edifices built for the rulers. Pharaonic tombs contained food to sustain the occupant in the afterlife. These tombs contained more wealth and foodstuff than a worker could ever dream of having. What could be more symbolic of a hardened heart, than the food placed in tombs by a worker who could never hope to consume such delicacies?

Bread's relationship to wages is found in English is well. Bread used to be a common slang expression for money, probably derived from the Cockney rhyming slang expression "bread and honey" which rhymes with "money." Fans of old gangster movies will recall dialogue where bank robber would demand the "dough."

While the Torah does remind us that man does not live on bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:3), the Hebrew language appears to have an unusual association with the word for bread. Lechem, the Hebrew word for bread, is the same root as lochem, to do battle. What is the common element? Dr Joseph Lewin offers an intriguing possibility:

What can you say about a culture that uses the same root lamed, het, mem) — for both bread and war, milhama? Do lehem and milhama really come from the same root? It's a good question, and to answer it one must invoke a third use of the root. It seems that laham means not only "he did battle" and "he ate bread" but also "he joined together."

Using this third meaning, Ludwig Koehler, in his 1953 Dictionary of the Hebrew Old Testament, opines that our root originally had the connotation of "to be closely packed together" and that that meaning is the common denominator. In war, says Koehler, soldiers often engage in hand-to-hand combat in close quarters. Voilà for war, milhama. Bread, he adds, suggesting perhaps that it is considered highly nutritious, is "compact food." Voilà for bread, lehem.

Joseph Lewin, A Hebrew Lesson (l-h-m), Jewish Heritage Online Magazine

Another connection between bread and battle has nothing to do with grammar and everything to do with food fights. People go to war over food and sources of food. The silent film classic Battleship Potemkin begins with a group of sailors rebelling when they are fed maggot-infested meat. Or think of the words attributed to Marie Antoinette when told the peasants had no bread: Let them eat cake.

Significant as it may be as a Pesach symbol bread (albeit in its unleavened form) is in the background on this last Shabbat of the festival. The battle between the God of Israel and the god of Egypt is the focal point.

The Torah constantly points out that Pharaoh's hard was hardened – he stubbornly ignored the suffering around him. This is part of the battle between God and Egypt's ruler.

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his courtiers had a change of heart about the people and said, "What is this we have done, releasing Israel from our service?" He ordered his chariot and took his men with him; he took six hundred of his picked chariots, and the rest of the chariots of Egypt, with officers in all of them. The Lord stiffened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he gave chase to the Israelites. As the Israelites were departing defiantly, boldly, the Egyptians gave chase to them, and all the chariot horses of Pharaoh, his horsemen, and his warriors overtook them encamped by the sea, near Pi-hahiroth, before Baal-zephon.

(Exodus 14:5-9)

Adding to the battle imagery is the fact that our ancestors are armed (Exodus 13:18) as they make their way out of Egypt and find themselves at the Sea of Reeds with Pharaoh and a cast of thousands giving chase. We all know how the story ends, we cross the Sea of Reeds, Pharaoh and his army drown, and we sing a song of victory to God our Redeemer.

But before we take the plunge a strange thing happens: Pharaoh is not the only one with a change of heart! Our ancestors saw Pharaoh and his troops approaching and they too had a change of heart. The text tells us that they thought they had made a fatal mistake; better to have stayed in Egypt under the yoke of the king. The term describing Pharaoh's approach is faro hikriv, Pharaoh drew near. The root is k-r-v, the same word as korban, sacrifice and often used to indicate drawing close to God. This is the understanding of the Midrash:

What is meant by "Pharaoh drew near"? He brought Israel close to the repentance they showed. Rabbi Berachiah said: Pharaoh's drawing near was better for Israel than a hundred fasts and prayers.

Exodus Rabbah 21:5

As if to stress the importance of this point, Itturei Torah, a collection of Hassidic teachings and Mussar, comments that it takes Pharaoh to bring Israel to repentance.

What is going on here? Pharaoh serves as a reminder of suffering; and that changes the people's will. They turn to God to find the strength to cross the sea and sing triumphantly to the God who redeemed them.

Yet at this moment of our great joy, our rabbinic ancestors wanted to make sure that our hearts would not be hardened and that we would never forget the tragic cost of this freedom: The countless Egyptians who died in the plagues and at the Sea of Reeds. To help us remember the lives lost, the Talmudic sages imagined how this event played out in the heavenly court:

In that hour the ministering angels wished to utter the song of praise before the Holy One, Who is Blessed, but God rebuked them, saying: My handiwork (the Egyptians) is drowning in the sea and you want to sing before me!

Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b

Throughout the festival of Pesach there are constant reminders to prevent us from developing a hardened heart. Remembering the suffering of the Egyptians is the reason we spill the drops of wine when recounting the plagues at the Seder; our joy is diminished by their suffering. For the very same reason we abbreviate the Hallel (Psalms of Praise) that we sing at services on the last days of Pesach. As we read this portion at the end of Pesach, we are reminded that our rejoicing must be tempered.

We were saved at the Sea of Reeds, the symbol par excellence of Redemption. But our redemption is incomplete. What we lacked when we stepped onto dry land, what we oftentimes still lack, is the awareness of the suffering of others. Even worse is the knowledge that others suffer and we do nothing. It is a short road from gnawing on the bread of affliction to suggesting to others "let them eat cake." It is the path of the hardened heart.

On the seventh day of Pesach, as we watch the Sea of Reeds recede in the distance, we know that a long journey still awaits us. Pesach is the beginning of redemption; this is as far as God takes us. Spiritually, this is as far as God can take us; the rest of the journey is on our own. Full redemption can only be achieved when we no longer need to be reminded of the suffering of others. When our heart is open to the suffering of others, and when we act to correct the injustices causing that pain, then all of us will truly be redeemed.

Chag sameach,
Shabbat shalom,
MS