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Lechem Mishneh: A Lesson in Retirement |
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Written by Rabbi Stephen Baars
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 When I was a kid in London, people regularly talked about a fiction called retirement. And even though retirees did not seem that happy to me, nevertheless, the way working people
described it, it just seemed like a grand luxury.
This week’s parsha explains why people don’t enjoy retirement.
After the Jewish people crossed the Red Sea, G-d had a miraculous food fall each day, only one portion each day. However, “…on the sixth day they gathered double bread…”. Even though Moses tells them that the double is for Friday and Shabbat and that the Manna will not fall on the Shabbat, nevertheless, people went out looking! (Exodus 16:22-27)
Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, the great 19th century German Jewish leader, explains that the Hebrew word for “bread” and “war” are really the same (lechem and milchama). The process of making bread, from the farmer to the miller and then to the baker is a battle requiring strategy and perseverance. So sophisticated are these tasks that they are the exclusive domains of three distinct professions – till this day. The warrior is only different in the type of engagement and the foe he meets, nevertheless, at its core, both are engaged in a battle.
Bread, the parable of the Torah for earning a living has become the common colloquialism, and so it’s not for no reason, Manna is called bread, because even though another common colloquialism has it that “Manna from Heaven” is associated with a free lunch, G-d doesn’t believe in such things.
If it’s from Heaven, you can be sure you have to earn it.
Therefore, the process of gathering every day their daily Manna, was no less challenging than it is for us, and almost likely more so.
If you interviewed every family member descended from your great, great, great grandparents, and find none ever went a day without a meal out of want, nevertheless, your level of worry will not diminish. And you will still do everything you can to ensure you have “Bread on the table,” as though hunger were a real possibility.
Similarly, though the Jews had twice as much on Friday to last them through till Sunday, they could not control themselves from doing whatever they could, at every opportunity to gather on Saturday.
But that was only the first, not the second Shabbat. By then, they learned how to enjoy life.
And so, when our time comes to kick back and enjoy our retirement, we will be divided amongst those that have learned how to, through keeping Shabbat, and those that hadn’t.
Enjoy!
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