The Manna

3,330 years ago, the 16^th of Iyar was a Sunday and that morning the fledgling Jewish nation woke up to find the מן on the ground outside their tents. The nation left on the night of the 14^th of Nissan which was a Thursday, and the מצה that they took out lasted 30 days until the 15^th of Iyar which was a Shabbos, and on the 16^th, a Sunday, the מן fell. I think it is no coincidence that this occurrence was less than 48 hours away from the day that celebrates the legacy of ר’ שמעון בר יוחאי, ל”ג בעומר. Allow me to explain.

If you read through פרשת המן, פרק ט”ז in פרשת בשלח, you will notice the words ערב and בקר repeated together over and over. There is only one other time that we hear those two words grouped together, in the creation story. Additionally, Adam was told מכל עץ הגן אכול תאכל, the Jews are told לקטו ממנו איש לפי אכלו, both have the concepts of eating. But not just eating, they both have eating with a clause that requires a limitation on that eating. Adam is told ומעץ הדעת טוב ורע לא תאכלו ממנו and the Jews are told אל יותר ממנו עד בקר. The only difference is that Adam’s was a limitation in space and the nations was a limitation on time (I am not sure what that difference means yet). And at the end of creation we have the Shabbos, and the center focus of the מן is what happened with it on Shabbos. The מהר”ל in fact writes that Hashem specifically started sending down the מן on a Sunday so that it would mirror the process of the creation of the world.

But what does this connection mean? How was our food in the desert a creation story? And what does this have to do with ל”ג בעומר?

I think that right after our nation was formed, we had been chosen by Hashem but were still on the journey to becoming truly His nation, we had not yet reached the level of ישראל ואורייתא וקודשא בריך הוא חד הוא. Obviously not, since we didn’t yet have the Torah. But I think that the מן was the next step in the development of that relationship on our way to get the Torah. We all know that you are what you eat, but it is also true that what you eat is you, since the food you consume becomes cells and blood in your body. ר’ נחמן explains that when we eat vegetation or animals which are a lower level of living creatures we elevate them to become a part of a human which is the highest form of living being (he explains the depth of what the מרגלים said ארץ אוכלת יושביה with this thought). I have heard a פירוש (I forgot exactly which one) said that the מן was crystalized and physicalized שכינה that the Jews were eating, they were elevating their bodies by sustaining them with the food from Hashem and they were bringing Hashem into the world at the same time. A perfect משול for this is how a fetus will feed from literally part of its mother.

It’s interesting to note that all 3 of these things, Hashem, the Jews, and the מן, all partook in the action of שבת. Hashem, we know, וישבת ביום השביעי, in פרשת בשלח it says וישבתו העם ביום השביעי, and in ספר יהושע when it says that he מן stopped falling the verb of choice is וישבת המן. The concept of being able to completely rest in something that belongs in עולם הבא, this is the world of running and that is the world of resting. We needed to be imbued with the ability to live in this world with the mindset of the next world.

Very few times throughout the Torah does the “narrator” put His two cents in. It is for the most part told in story form, but both times the מן is discussed, in פרשת בשלח and בהעלותך, the Narrator gives a description of the מן, and both times it is described as a זרע גד, a certain seed. Rashi says that it was round like that seed, but if all the Torah wanted to tell us was the fact that its round, just say that it was round. And if a comparison was necessary, the sun, a ball, someone’s head, there are hundreds of round objects to compare it to, why some obscure seed? The answer is that the specific word used was important. A זרע גד, the seed of Gad, there was a שבט גד and his ברכה from Yakov is something that was important for the entire nation to internalize during this time. Yakov said to his son, גד גדוד יגודנו, Gad will expand to become a platoon. The concept of one person being more powerful than just a single individual. שבט גד were the warriors, since each warrior is far more than just one person, they are each a moving piece in a unit of many that acts as one, and there, each individual is qualitatively more than a regular individual can be.

I heard a beautiful pshat that the word גדולה comes from the word גד. We have in halacha concepts called גוד אחית and גוד אסיק, which state that if the walls of a sukkah reach a height of 10 טפחים off the ground they are seen as if they reach up to the sky, or if the wall dips off the top of the sukkah even just a little it is seen as if it stretches to the ground. The concept of גדולה is for a person to be able to look in the mirror or at his adversaries and say, you think I am just one small person?! You are very wrong, I reach up to the sky, and even in my lowest depths I can stretch back to Hashem. I can expand beyond what meets the eye. As a nation that had just been enslaved and abused, the מן taught us that we each have a unique relationship with Hashem (each person got just the amount that they needed, the מדרש says it was the perfect distance from their tents, and each serving tasted unique to that person’s palate) and that we are each capable of far more than we can ever imagine. We are pieces of the Infinite Source in this world.

And this is the message of ר’ שמעון בר יוחאי. There is a גמרא in מסכת סנהדרין that says that the midrashim from the different parts of the Torah have default authors. If there is a ספרי that doesn’t have a noted author, then it is assumed that R’ Shimon is the one who said it. Rashi says that ספרי is the מדרש explaining ספר במדבר and ספר דברים. When it comes to understanding these two ספרים of Torah, R’ Shimon is the one to turn to.

In ספר במדבר we have the counting of the בני ישראל, so much so that it is called ספר הפיקודים, or “Numbers”. But if you look throughout ספר במדבר the Jews are only counted twice, once inפרשת במדבר and once in פרשת פנחס. And, the Jews also get counted in שמות. So why is the entire ספר themed after counting if it is seemingly such a minute part of the ספר?

The purpose of counting is to lift the person up to show the power and specialness of each individual. But if counting was merely to show that you are an individual, that should only make you lonely and separated from others. In a world of pure individualism people wouldn’t be able to relate to one another since they are all so different. We have a different type of counting. The point of the type of counting that we do is to count the individuals but specifically with the goal of adding them up to get to the total which tells the number of individuals in the group. This is because the individual’s true power is when they join their uniqueness’ together and help each other reach a common goal together.

Let’s take another look at ספר במדבר as a whole. We begin with the Jews being counted, then we have the description of the way each family and tribe camped within the entire nation, and the rest of the ספר is mostly occupied with stories of individuals. There are 2-3 million people walking through the desert yet we hear about 5 sisters who want a piece of land, 254 people who rebelled against Moshe, and 1 person who chopped wood on Shabbos. Even in a huge nation, each person can make a difference.

R’ Shimon Bar Yochai, who is the master of ספר במדבר is the one to teach us the power of the individual. And I think that is why in the same week as ל”ג בעומר we have the beginning of our receiving of the מן.