Beshalach
*** This week's Parasha is dedicated in HONOR of BARBARA and ABE FRANCO by their children, grandchildredn, and great-grandchildren. ***
In Parashat Beshalach we read about the Man (food) that fell everyday in the desert, and that was the food the Jewish people insisted on throughout their sojourn in the desert. There is a Gemara in Yoma, Daf 76, which says that the students of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai asked [listen to the audio clip for the exact quote] how come G-d didn’t arrange it that the Man should fall one day a year? Why did it have to be a daily event? So he answered with an analogous story to what it is comparable to.
The story goes like this. There was a king who had one son, and the king gave his son an allowance once a year. So the son had a reason to visit his father once a year to pick up the check. So the King then changed it and started to give him his allowance on a daily basis. And now the son needed to visit his father every single day. Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai finished his parable and said the same applies to the Jewish people. A person in the desert at the time, who had 4 or 5 children, was worried that the Man would not come down the next day, and maybe Chas Veshalom famine, peril, or death would come upon them the next day. So therefore everyday he and his Jewish brethren needed to ask G-d and beseech G-d and pray everyday in order that the Man would come down so they can feed their families.
What Shimon Ben Yochai was saying, that the advantage of the Man coming each day was in order to create a relationship between the Jewish people and G-d. Because now we needed to come to G-d in prayer every day. And that already forged a relationship. If G-d would give it to us once a year, so then we would only pray once and wait until the next year. But G-d loves us. The Man once a day was a sign from G-d that he loves us, in order that we come to him everyday and talk with him and ask for something so that we would be closer to him.
With this we explained the curse on the snake, the original snake in Gan Eden. It was cursed when it caused Adam and Chava to make the sin. The Pasuk writes that after G-d punished Adam and Chava with their curses, G-d tells the snake that it shall be relegated to eating the dirt of the ground for the rest of eternity. The dirt is going to be its food. So the Ba’ale Musar asks, is that a curse? Wherever the snake goes he has food. Human beings have to go and travel and look and search high and low in order to find Parnasa, and here the snake, G-d gave him the most accessible commodity as his livelihood, which is dirt. And therefore the question is asked if such is in deed a curse? And based on what Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai says in that Gemara, we understand that G-d was telling the snake that he doesn’t want to have a relationship with the snake. G-d doesn’t want talk to the snake again. Here is the food forever, and now leave me alone. The snake was being denied the ability to have a connection and a communication with G-d. However, Adam Harishon was cursed with the need to go out and work, but it was a blessing in disguise where G-d made it difficult in order that we now have to come and pray every morning, afternoon, and night, in order to ask G-d for Parnasa.
So it’s a form of love that G-d causes us to work for a living, as he did in the desert bringing the Man on a daily basis.
