Man Will Not Live on Bread Alone

We find in the midst of this week's parsha, parshat Ekev, the statement

"כל-הַמִּצְוָה, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם--תִּשְׁמְרוּן לַעֲשׂוֹת: לְמַעַן תִּחְיוּן וּרְבִיתֶם, וּבָאתֶם וִירִשְׁתֶּם אֶת-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר-נִשְׁבַּע ה' לַאֲבֹתֵיכֶם
דברים ח:א

If we are to succeed as a people, that is, to live and multiply and inherit the land as was promised to our forefathers, then we must keep every mitzvah commanded by Hashem. Elaborating on the texture of such a lifestyle, pasuk ג reads:

וַיְעַנְּךָ, וַיַּרְעִבֶךָ, וַיַּאֲכִלְךָ אֶת-הַמָּן אֲשֶׁר לֹא-יָדַעְתָּ, וְלֹא יָדְעוּן אֲבֹתֶיךָ: לְמַעַן הוֹדִיעֲךָ, כִּי לֹא עַל-הַלֶּחֶם לְבַדּוֹ יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם--כִּי עַל-כָּל-מוֹצָא פִי-ה' , יִחְיֶה הָאָדָם ...


Hashem afflicted us, made us hungry, AND fed us manna... Why? "In order that He would make known to you that man shall not live upon bread alone..."

Life, real living, is not just about physical sustenance, not just about working for material reward. Sefer Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy, emphasizes the covenant between Hashem and Bnei Yisrael. The covenant is about being part of something larger than yourself, about living in relationship with GD, inviting in the שכינה, infusing even mundane living with "the grace of great things."

The verse "Man shall not live upon bread alone," finishes with: "but upon everything that issues from the mouth of Hashem shall he live." 'Real' living, the kind that is infused with a sense of purpose and of the sublime means standing up to encounter the Eternal, and living a life where threads of sensitivity, passion, perseverance, and faithfulness support the cross-threads of life's vicissitudes, weaving Divinity into the texture of life.

It is of note that in testing the mettle of Bnei Yisrael, Hashem both afflicts and makes us hungry, as well as feeding us. The reality of life is that it's not always a picnic, that our lot, aka everything issuing from the mouth of Hashem, is not always pleasant. As such, we are instructed with mitzvot aseh and mitzvot lo ta'aseh, both positive and negative commandments. We know, for instance, that for children to grown into health, compassionate, responsible adults, they need both love and boundaries. So we have both. Our faithfulness to engage the Divine via restraint, to sanctify that relationship with self-limitation, means that there is more to our lives than just ourselves. With such a commitment we empower ourselves to bring to the dark valleys of our journey the same engagement of the Divine which we feel at the peaks.
'גם כי אלך בגיא צלמות לא אירא רע, כי אתה עמדי.'

May we all have the strength and prescience to immerse ourselves in real living.

Dialogue in Darkness

[From my entry for the Counterpoint Israel blog after our visit to the Dialogue of Darkness exhibit ('the Blind Museum') on the 17th of Tammuz/July 20.]

Yesterday our Counterpoint group had the privilege of going to the Blind Museum in Holon, and participating in the "Dialogue in Darkness" experience. It is called dialogue because it engages one's self with the other, but whose particular insight comes from the darkness, as the subtitle of this participatory museum reads, "Ain ma liroat, aval yesh ma legalot" or "there's naught to be seen, but there is what to be revealed."

It's interesting that sometimes it is only through deprivation of something that we really learn to appreciate its value. The experience entailed a tour along a pitch black route including sightless experience of a forest, a boat ride, a bedroom, music, a street in Manhattan, and a restaurant, all led by a guide who was himself blind. Always led by the self-assured and reassuring voice of our guide in an exploration of our surroundings and a simultaneous tour of introspection, we learned to see in a different light and gained a new perspective on our usual way of experiencing. How much we depend on what we see and how we fumble when rendered sightless!

Rav Yitzhak Hutner, in his collection of articles Pachad Yitzhak, draws a similar lesson from the holiday of Purim and the way it teaches us to view our reality in a new light. Rav Hutner compares the experience in Megillat Esther, a world comparable to our own in their quality of Hester Panim (Hidden Face) - where Divinity does not operate as obviously and explicitly as in much of Tanakh - to the experience of two men in a forest in the middle of the night, tasked with reaching friends on the other side. One is equipped with a candle by whose light he easily navigates the dark forest to reach the people. The other, however, must develop his aural (hearing) sense, and find his way by listening to the voice beyond the darkness. While the first person arrives faster, Rav Hutner cites the question from the Gemara, "What's a candle worth at noontime?" In other words, once day breaks and everything is clear, the person with the candle has gained nothing, but the person who developed his hearing maintains his aural sensitivity, doubly capable of navigating the obstacles of life.

As our guide, blind from birth, pointed out, there are different kinds of blindness. After following his voice in the dark for over an hour, depending on his confident and assured guidance, he spoke a bit about being blind, of particular note, how he is liberated from the trap of judging people superficially, instead able to access their inner persona more directly. I'm reminded of the arch-goal of Judaism, as Rabbi Akiva explains it, "v'ahavta l'reacha comocha," "Love your fellow as yourself," and the insight Erich Fromm brings in The Art of Loving as he elaborates on this manner of relation, that when we relate to people's periphery, we focus on what is different between us, but when we relate to people's core, we realize our common humanity and shared essence, which in the Jewish tradition we understand to be the Tzelem Elokim, the likeness of the Divine.

How can we preserve the insight from the wisdom of our guide and our experience in darkness and let it inform our daily experience? In fact, we recreate that experience every day when we cover our eyes as we say the Shema, escaping from the illusion of discreteness and separation and learning to hear the voice of connectedness, a reminder of greater Unity. As we begin the three-week mourning period marking the destruction of the Temple, whose traditional cause is attributed baseless hatred, the message and insight into our greater G-dly Unity is timely. At first it seemed ironic that our guide's name was Meir, meaning One who illuminates, but at the end of the day, there was no irony at all; it was by the merit of his experience, and our Dialogue in Darkness, that we can appreciate our life experience and mutual connection in a more pervasive light.