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Ekev 5765
by Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Congregation B'nai Israel
Toledo, OH
We have all heard the saying “Man does not live by bread alone.” Where do we
know those famous words from? Who said them?
Even many Jews are under the impression that this is a somehow a Christian
teaching. These words ARE found in the Christian Bible in the Gospel
according to Matthew. When he says those words, however, Jesus is quoting
from a verse from the Hebrew Bible: from the book of Deuteronomy, in this
week’s Torah portion, Ekev where we read lo al halechem lavado, not by bread
alone.
One minor mystery I discovered in studying this week’s Torah portion is that
there is a real paucity of rabbinic commentary on this fascinating teaching.
The classic commentator Rashi has nothing to say about it. The prolific
Nachmanides has nothing to say about it. There’s nothing in the Talmud,
Midrash, or Zohar about it. So if this morning I bring in fewer than my
usual number of rabbinic commentaries, you should know it’s not because I
didn’t look!
I often like to start my study of a verse with the pshat, the plain or
literal meaning. Here’s a question for the doctors in the house: what would
happen to you if you tried to live al halechem levado, on bread
alone—physically, a diet restricted to bread?
On its most simple level, the pshat, this teaching, lo al halechem levado,
not by bread alone, is literally true. Thanks to a wonderful web site called
“The Straight Dope” I was able to find out what would happen if you tried to
live on bread alone. Even if you expanded it slightly to “bread and water,”
you’d only live about two years before you died a very unpleasant death from
scurvy because of the lack of Vitamin C in your diet. So it is clearly true
that man cannot live by bread alone.
Some people read this passage literally and use it as a springboard to
gourmet meals. Cornell University has a website called “Not by Bread
Alone: America’s Culinary Heritage” which has information on everything from
gastronomy and the pleasures of dining out to kitchen technology.
But most of us understand that this is not what the Torah is talking about.
We understand that the Torah is saying you need more than material goods –
symbolized by “bread” – to be truly alive.
The truth of this statement is illustrated by last year’s winner of the
Oscar for best picture, Million Dollar Baby. If you haven’t seen the movie
and somehow have avoided hearing how it ends and you plan to see the movie,
you might want to leave for a couple of minutes so I don’t spoil it for you.
The hero of the movie, Maggie (played by a very buff looking Hilary Swank),
has one ambition in life: to become a female boxing champion. She struggles
to convince a particular trainer to take her on, she trains around the
clock. Even though she’s dirt poor and sees boxing as a way out of her
poverty, she is very clearly motivated by a lot of things besides money. She
is so desperate to succeed and get the public acknowledgment of being a
winner you can’t but help cheer her on.
She has a great ride up, makes lots of money, gets the fame and recognition
she craves—and then in a bout for the world championship she gets sucker
punched after the bell, hits her head on a stool and becomes a quadriplegic,
paralyzed from the neck down.
She can’t take it—she clearly doesn’t live for bread alone, she has lots of
money—but in her eyes, her life is over because she’ll never hear them
cheering her name again. So she asks for help in committing suicide.
Maggie clearly needed more than bread—but what was it she was trying to fill
the other side with, the side of spirit? Something very ephemeral, fame and
recognition. Which is totally the wrong direction. When the Torah tells us
“man does not live by bread alone,” it is not telling us that the other
thing we need is ego gratification. A much better role model for coping with
that kind of tragedy is the late Christopher Reeve, the “Superman” who went
on to found a non-profit foundation that raises money for spinal cord
research after becoming paralyzed in a horseback riding accident. Or Hilary
Lister, a quadriplegic who recently sailed solo across the English Channel
trimming her sails with a “sip and puff”
control since she can only move her head. Those two clearly were able to
find other things to sustain their spirit.
The trainer in Million Dollar Baby, Frankie (played by Clint Eastwood)
clearly senses that Maggie needs something else besides boxing and money
after her injury. He brings her some brochures for college classes.
Perhaps he was trying to take the advice of Rabbi Morris Adler, z”l, who
said, “human beings do not live on bread alone. Human beings are not only
body but also mind. Intellectual development is the most significant aspect
of human life. Human beings are also seekers of good, faith, and justice.
Education brings us the acknowledgement that there is mystery in this world
which our limited human understanding cannot comprehend.”
“There is mystery in this world which our limited human understanding cannot
comprehend.”
We need to connect with that mystery in this world—we need to connect with
God to find real fulfillment. After his accident Christopher Reeve
discovered religion—he joined the Unitarian Church. When an interviewer from
Reader’s Digest asked him why the turn to religion after nearly 50 years
without it, he replied: “It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abe
Lincoln, who said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad.
And that is my religion." I think we all have a little voice inside us that
will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out
all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will
tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and
believes that God believes that man is good.”
Jews also believe God is good. “Man does not live by bread alone” is only a
part of the verse in this week’s Torah portion. In context, the verse is
steering us toward God. The complete verse reads “And he humbled you, and
let you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you knew not, neither did your
fathers know; that he might make you know that man does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord does man
live.”
One of the few rabbinic commentaries on this verse I found, from R. Yakov
Harlap explains the verse as saying the mannah our ancestors ate in the
desert was not physically satisfying; the verse says that God both let you
hunger and fed you with mannah. The people ate it, they could live on it,
but they still felt hungry afterwards. The mannah was nourishing
spiritually—the people knew they were being supported by the “mouth of God,”
by the command of God, for the mannah descended from heaven. The sense of
physical hunger was still there—but the people didn’t care, they were
spiritually satisfied.
Most of us can’t achieve that level of being content to be satisfied
spiritually while we still have a gnawing hunger in our bellies. In Pirkei
Avot, the Teachings of our Fathers, R. Eliezer b. Azarya says Im ain kemach,
ain Torah; im ain Torah, ain kemach, “without bread there is no Torah;
without Torah there is no bread.” If you don’t have some bread—if you’re
scrambling for survival trying to figure out where your next meal is coming
from—it’s hard to spend much time studying Torah.
But how do we understand “without Torah there is no bread?” Plenty of Jews
seem to manage to make a living without having Torah in their lives.
Rabbi James Stone Goodman explains it as meaning that for a person with no
Torah—a person with no God—no amount of bread will ever be enough.
I’m sure we can all think of examples of people like that. I came across one
in the newspaper earlier this week: a former head of a suburban Chicago
school system, a man who was paid $183,000 a year, yet that wasn’t enough.
He stole thousands of dollars, including milk money and library fees from
one of the poorest districts in the state of Illinois. Ain Torah, ain kemach
– more bread doesn’t cure the longing for more bread.
We need Torah—and I mean Torah in the broadest sense, as a knowledge of
God—to help us learn to be satisfied, to know when we have enough.
Finding that balance between kemach and Torah, between material well-being
and spiritual well-being, is probably the greatest spiritual challenge for
most of us middle class and upper middle class Americans.
Today we are celebrating the 50th wedding anniversary of David and Joan
Katz. Judge David Katz is a living example of balancing Torah and kemach.
No one becomes a judge for the kemach, for the money—if you are successful
enough as an attorney to be nominated for the Federal bench, you are almost
certainly making a lot more money than a judge. A judge’s clerks are
generally earning more than the judge they clerked for two or three years
after leaving the clerkship. Judge Katz might not put it this way—but I
suggest that it was somehow the Torah in him, the spark of the Godly in him,
that motivated him to take a big cut in salary to serve the public.
May we all remember that “man does not live on bread alone”—but rather, as
the verse tells us, we need both bread and the spiritual sustenance that
comes with living a life al kol motza mi pi Adonai, according to what comes
out from the mouth of God. Lord, help us remember that to be truly alive, to
be spiritually alive, we need both bread, and to live our lives in a Godly
fashion—which we Jews learn from the Torah.
Amen
To view the archives, go to www.neshamah.net
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