פרשת בשלח: איפה נמצאת צנצנת המן?

When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” —for they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, “That is the bread which ה׳ has given you to eat.

ויאמרו איש אל אחיו מן הוא, They said to one another it is manna, etc. We need to understand why this whole verse is necessary. Perhaps G'd caused them to say מן instead of מה, and this remained the name of this heavenly bread. This would correspond to a commentary on Psalms 46,9 in Berachot 7 where the word Shammot, desolation, is read instead as Shemot, names. According to the Talmud, G'd Himself named different phenomena in His world. The words כי לא ידעו, "for he (the people) did not know what it was," would be the reason why G'd had to supply the name. This may have been the reason the Israelites eventually lamented the nature of the manna. Perhaps the Israelites were very clever calling it מן as they realised (verse 31) that this word itself was something unusual and reflected the Spirit of G'd.

(33) And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, put one omer of manna in it, and place it before ה׳, to be kept throughout the ages.”

(3)And all the people perceived the thunderings (Exod. 20:15). The verse does not say “perceived the thunder,” but rather the thunderings. R. Johanan explained this as follows: The sound went forth and divided itself, at first, into seven sounds. These sounds in turn became seventy different languages, so that all nations might comprehend (what was being said). When each nation heard His voice in its own language they fainted away, but Israel listened to it and was unharmed.

(5) Observe that His voice went forth to each Israelite in accordance with the individual’s capacity to receive it. The elders, the men, the youths, the little ones, the sucklings—each heard it according to his own capacity. Even Moses heard it according to his capacity, as it is said: Moses spoke, and God answered him by (with) a voice (Exod. 19:19); that is, with a voice that Moses was able to comprehend. Thus, it says: The voice of the Lord was powerful with strength (Ps. 29:1). “With His strength” is not written in this verse, but rather with strength, that is, according to the strength of each individual (to tolerate the sound). Even the pregnant women heard it in accordance with their strength. Therefore it says: Each one of them according to their strength.

(6) R. Yosé the son of Hanina stated: If you are amazed at this remember, that the manna descended for each Israelite with a taste that varied according to the needs of each individual. The young men, for instance, ate it as bread, as it is said: Behold, I will cause to rain bread from heaven for you (Exod. 16:4); the elders ate it as wafers of honey, as it is said: And the taste of it was like wafers made with honey (ibid., v. 31); the sucklings, as milk from the breasts of their mothers, as is said: And the taste of it was as the taste of a cake baked with oil (Num. 11:8);³²Reading leshad ha-shemen (“a cake with oil”) as le-shad ha-shemen (“as a fat breast”). for the ill, as fine flour mixed in honey, as it is said: Thou didst eat fine flour, and honey, and oil (Exod. 16:13); and the gentiles who tasted it found it as bitter as coriander seed, as is said: Now the manna was like coriander seed (Num. 11:7).

(7) R. Yosé the son of Hanina stated further that just as the manna, which was actually of one kind, could change into different kinds (tastes), because of the requirements of each of them, so could the voice that went forth change for each of them according to the individual’s ability to hear it, so that no harm might befall him. Whence do we know that the voice divided itself into many sounds? It is said: And all the people perceived the thunderings. The plural thunderings is written, and not the singular “thundering.” Therefore, God thundereth marvelously with His voice (Job 37:5).

לדרתיכם FOR YOUR GENERATIONS e. g., in the days of Jeremiah: when Jeremiah was rebuking them (the people), saying, “Why do you not engage yourselves with the Torah?”, and they answered him, “Shall we leave our work and engage ourselves with the Torah? From where shall we earn a living?”, he brought out to them the cruse of Manna and said to them, (Jeremiah 2:31) “[O Generation], see ye the thing of the Lord!” It is not said “Hear the word” but “See the thing”! — This thing is what your fathers were fed with. The Omnipresent God has many messengers (many means) to provide food for those who fear Him (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 16:33).

[God] subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, in order to teach you that a human being does not live on bread alone, but that one may live on anything that ה׳ decrees.

A time is coming—declares my Lord GOD—when I will send a famine upon the land: not a hunger for bread or a thirst for water, but for hearing the words of the LORD.

The matter is that when Israel was in Egypt, the iron furnace, they were so clarified that after fifty days they were able to receive the Torah because of their bodies’ clarification. And because of this the Sea of Reeds needed to split for them so they could walk through the sea; this needed to be the order so that they could clarify more and more to the point that afterward, at the Giving of the Torah, our Sages of Blessed Memory said that their impurity ceased (Shabbat 146a). And they continued clarifying in this way, that the materiality continually diminished to the point that after the splitting of the Sea of Reeds they had clarified so much to the extent that they could receive Upper Life-Force without any garment, because of the clarification of their physical materiality. For the abundance flows from above according to the thickness or thinness of the recipient. And the life-force that comes from above is drawn by way of the speech that is fixed in a person’s mouth, as is known. Therefore immediately after the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the passage of manna is stated, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that each person received Upper Life-Force without any garment, just Man eating the bread of the angels (Psalm 78:25). And by way of what will it be drawn? A day's portion [davar] every day, which is to say by way of the words [dibburim] that they speak from day to day in words of Truth and Torah, until after they have returned to their materiality and their physicality has thickened – therefore the flow descends from above garbed in several garments according to the power of the recipients. And if so, even today in the present there is the aspect of “manna,” but it comes by way of garments; for each person, his life-force is garbed in a vessel, each person according to his aspect, meaning the thing from which his sustenance comes. And the wise person has his eyes in his head (Ecclesiastes 2:14) to understand that the Blessed Creator’s life-force is what is garbed in that thing, and [God] has contracted [God’s] self in that thing, and it is merely a vessel for the Upper Life-Force. Therefore Blessed God said to Moses, Take a jar, and put [an omer of manna in it,] and place it before the LORD to be kept throughout your generations (Ex. 16:33), which is to say that since in the coming generations their physicality will thicken until they can only receive the life-force through a vessel – it needs to garb itself in the material vessel according to the recipients. And that is [the meaning of] Take a jar, which is to say a vessel, and put an omer of manna in it, which is to say manna, the life-force, is garbed within the vessel, which is the jar. And similarly today there is also the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, and afterward the manna comes; for every day we recite the Song of the Sea, and one must imagine in his awareness as if he is reciting the Song at the Sea as in that time. And then it will truly cause the aspect of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds above, as is known, when he recites it with whole intention as is stated regarding this in the Holy Zohar. And afterward he receives life-force as we have said, each according to his aspect. Therefore the Shulhan Arukh wrote, “It is good to recite the passage of Manna” each day (Orah Hayyim 1.5), so that he will know that his sustenance comes from Upper Supervision, and understand this.

THAT I MAY TRY THEM, WHETHER THEY WILL WALK IN MY LAW OR NOT. “I.e., whether they will observe the commandments associated with it, such as [the laws] that they should not leave [a remainder] of it until the morning and that they should not go out on the Sabbath to collect it.” Thus the language of Rashi.
But this is not correct. Rather, the intent [of the trial mentioned here] is as He said, Who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not; that He might afflict thee, and that He might try thee, to do thee good at thy latter end. [The manna itself] was a trial to them, since they had no food in the wilderness and were without recourse to any sustenance except the manna, which they knew not from before and had never heard of from their fathers. Each day’s quantity came down on its day, and they were eagerly desirous for it. Yet with all this, they hearkened to walk after G-d to a place of no food. And so indeed He said to them again, And thou shalt remember all the way in which the Eternal thy G-d hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that He might afflict thee, to try thee, to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldest keep His commandments, or no. He could have led them by way of the cities that were round about them. Instead, He led them through the wilderness wherein were serpents, fiery serpents, and scorpions, and each day’s quantity of food would come to them only from heaven in order to try them and to do them good at the end so that they would believe in Him forever. I have already explained the matter of “trial” in the commentary on the verse, And G-d tried Abraham.
The Rabbi [Moshe ben Maimon] has written in the Moreh Nebuchim [on the verse before us, That I may try them, whether they will walk in My law or not, that it means] that “everyone capable of knowledge should know and determine whether there is usefulness in the service of G-d, and whether there is adequate satisfaction in it or not.” But if so, it would have been proper for Him to say, “that He may try them to know!”
Now Scripture mentions here only the matter of manna, which was “the bread” which He caused to rain upon them, [and it does not refer to the flesh which He gave them]. However, from that which Moses told them, This shall be, when the Eternal shall give you in the evening flesh to eat, and in the morning bread to the full, we know that everything was told to him. It is only that when a subject is mentioned twice, Scripture shortens it in the report of the command or the narrative, as I have mentioned to you many times. At times, it omits one — [the command or the narrative] — altogether, such a case being the verse written in this section: This is the thing which the Eternal hath commanded: Let an omerful of it [the manna] be kept throughout your generations, and the command [of G-d to Moses] is not recorded at all. This is also the case in many places. But in the opinion of those scholars who say that lechem here means “all food,” it is possible that by saying, Behold, I will cause to rain ‘lechem,’ the meaning refers to both the manna and to the quail, i.e., that He would fulfill their request for bread and flesh. Moses explained that the flesh would be [available] to eat in the evening, and the bread would be [available] in the morning to the full, as is the customary way.

§ Apropos the verse: “And he afflicted you and caused you to hunger, and fed you with manna” (Deuteronomy 8:3), the Gemara expounds related verses. The Torah states: “Who feeds you manna in the desert which your fathers did not know, in order to afflict you” (Deuteronomy 8:16). What affliction was there in eating the manna? Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi disagreed on the matter. One said: There is no comparison between one who has bread in his basket and one who does not have bread in his basket. The affliction in eating the manna lay in there being no leftover food for the next day. Each day the people worried that they might not have any food to eat the next day. And one said: There is no comparison between one who sees the food and eats it and one who does not see the food and eats it. Though the manna could taste like anything, it always looked the same and did not look as it tasted. Being unable to see the food that they tasted was an affliction.

The Gemara returns to the same verse: It states: “We remember…the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic” (Numbers 11:5). Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi debate the verse’s meaning. One said: They tasted the flavor of all types of food in the manna, but they cried because they could not taste the tastes of these five foods that they mentioned. And one said: They tasted the flavor of all types of food, as well as their textures. The sensation was so strong that it seemed to them like they were eating those very foods. However, with the foods they listed, the people tasted only their flavor but not their texture.

And ה׳ said to Moses, “I will rain down bread for you from the sky, and the people shall go out and gather each day that day’s portion—that I may thus test them, to see whether they will follow My instructions or not.

[God] subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your ancestors had ever known, in order to teach you that a human being does not live on bread alone, but that one may live on anything that ה׳ decrees.

The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!” Now the manna was like coriander seed, and in color it was like bdellium. The people would go about and gather it, grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, boil it in a pot, and make it into cakes. It tasted like rich cream.

and the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why did you make us leave Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food.”