Full
decades after they were released from the Camps, many Holocaust survivors still
continued to, and continue to, hoard unnecessary objects. I am talking of items
like napkins from restaurants, paper towels, packets of mustard, tiny bags of
sugar. These people survived death by grabbing on to every stitch of lifeblood
that they could hold to. They could not stop.
*
The monn—manna—was the bread that God rained down on the Jews from the
sky. It was the Jews’ sustenance throughout their 40 years in the Desert. It
appeared every morning of the week. It covered the ground. The people would
gather it and eat it.
*
There were rules around how much you could take, and when you would take it,
and when it would fall. In the morning, everyone took what he needed for his
own tent. On Friday, a double portion would fall: one portion for Friday, and a
second portion for Saturday, for Sabbath, because no bread would fall on Sabbath.
It was no use to gather more bread than was necessary for your tent for that day. Your extra bread would spoil.
If you went out to gather more bread on the Sabbath, you would find nothing. No bread fell on the Sabbath.
*
These people had lived through the Holocaust in Egypt. They had also lived by
grabbing. Remember, for instance, that Pharoah had scattered them throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble
for straw—to
gather their own raw materials for making bricks.
Now they lived off bread that did not allow you to hoard it. It turned wormy, or simply was absent, when you tried to take too much. And so they could not rely on their hoarding to take them through the day. They needed to learn to rely on God.
God who brought bread this morning. God who brought bread yesterday. God who would bring bread tomorrow.
In this way, the falling and not-falling of the bread taught them faith. This was their re-education, after of hell.
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