A.
In this week’s parasha Moshe reminds Israel: וזכרת את כל הדרך אשר הוליכך ד' אלקיך זה ארבעים שנה במדבר למען ענתך לנסתך לדעת את אשר בלבבך התשמר מצותו אם לא: ויענך וירעבך ויאכלך את המן אשר לא ידעת ולא ידעון אבתיך למען הודיעך כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחי' האדם כי על כל מוצא פי ד' יחי' האדם: (“And you will remember the whole way which Ha-Shem your G-d has made you go now forty years in the desert, in order to torment you to test you to know what is in your heart, will you keep His mitzvoth or not. And He tormented you and made you hungry and fed you the man which you had not known, nor had your fathers known, in order to inform you that it is not upon bread [lehem] alone that a person lives, that it is upon everything which comes out of Ha-Shem’s mouth [kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem] that a person lives”; VIII, 2-3).
Our attention is drawn especially by the last verse; of course one needs food, here symbolized by the generic term lehem; what does the Torah wish to impart to us by contrasting lehem with kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem?
B.
The Maharal mi-Prag offers the following insight: There are, he says, three different categories of parnasa, “livelihood”: האחת כדי לפרנס ולהחיות נפשו כמו שנתן לאדם הלחם, כי הלחם הוא חיי האדם בודאי וכדכתיב "כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחי' האדם." (“The first is in order to support and give life to his nefesh, for which He gave human beings lehem, for lehem is certainly [necessary for] human life, as it is written: ‘For not upon lehem alone does a person live’”).
השני הוא הפרנסה שנתן לו אף כי אין צריך לו רק להנאתו ולטובתו ואין חיות האדם תלוי בו כמו השמן והיין, ואין צריך אלו דברים רק לתוספות הנאה ולא לצורך חיותו. (“The second is parnasa which He has given one, even though it is not essential to him, [but] merely for his enjoyment and benefit; human vitality is not dependent upon it, for instance, oil and wine; one does not need these things, they are only for additional enjoyment, and not essential to his life”).
והשלישי הוא שנותן לו הש"י אף שאינו נהנה ממנו רק שעל ידו יתוקן הדבר, כי כל דבר שברא הש"י צריך תיקון, כמו החטים לבשל, וכן הבשר וגו' (“And the third is what Ha-Shem gives one, even though he does not [immediately] benefit from it, just that by means of it a thing is improved, for everything which Ha-Shem created requires improvement/adjustment [tiqqun], for instance wheat for cooking, and similarly meat....”; נצח ישראל פ"ה וע"ע נתיבות עולם ח"א נתיב גמילות חסדים פ"א).
From the Maharal’s words, it seems logical to conclude that the first category, encompassing the absolute minimum essentials of life, is what our passage means by lehem, whilst the other two categories, food items which are beneficial but not utterly essential and the knowledge and capability to improve them (e.g., through cooking and baking), are presumably covered by the phrase kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem.
The idea that the intellectual knowledge and capability necessary for, e.g., cooking and baking is “what comes out of Ha-Shem’s mouth” seems to make sense, but such products as wine (especially if we understand by it simple grape juice, as indeed it is halachically) and olive oil are no less natural products than the ground grains implied by the word lehem; indeed, the knowledge and capability necessary to make even the simplest bread, matza, not to speak of making wine or olive oil, would seem to belong more to the third category than the first.
What, then, does kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem really mean?
C.
The Haqal Yitzhaq offers an insight, courtesy of the Shpitivker Rav, in his séfer Vikkuha Rabba.
The Rav begins by calling our attention to a peculiar argument recorded in the Talmud: מלכא ומלכתא הוו יתבי מלכא אמר גדיא יאי ומלכתא אמרה אימרא יאי אמרו מאן מוכח כהן גדול דקא מסיק קרבנות כל יומא אתא איהו אחוי בידי' אי גדיא יאי יסק לתמידא (“The king and queen were sitting; the king said, 'A kid [gadya] is better'; and the queen said, 'A lamb [imra] is better.' They said, 'Who can decide?' The kohén gadol, who offers sacrifices every day. [The kohén gadol] came over, and signed with his hand: If a gadya is better, let it be offered for the daily sacrifice [tamida]”; פסחים נ"ז.).
That this odd dispute involves something rather deeper than an idle discussion of whether a kid or lamb tastes better is suggested by the fact this passage also occurs elsewhere (כריתות כ"ח:) with minor changes, one of which enables us to identify the royal personages involved as Alexander Yannai, the first of the Hashmona’im to insist on calling himself a king, an avid follower of the heterodox Tzëduqim (“Sadducees”), and thus a fierce opponent of the hachamim, whom he persecuted, and his pious queen, Shëlomtziyyon Alexandra, sister of Rabbi Shim‘on ben Shatah, whom she contrived to hide from her husband the length of his reign in the very palace, as well as by the rather gruesome fate of the kohén gadol in the story (עיי"ש). The Vikkuha Rabba allows us to penetrate to the depths of the debate.
The Rav begins by noting the obvious truism that, in every time and every place, there are people who are relatively rich, and those who are poor. The king, he tells us, was arguing that the status of any of these people was purely a matter of mazzal (seeing the word gadya as a pun on the Hebrew word gad, roughly, “good fortune”). Mazzal, formed on the root nun-zayin-lamed which connotes “flow,” is a source of metaphysical energy which “flows” to a person. (The meaning of the root underlying gad, by the way, is to “draw down” such energy). One’s relative wealth or poverty, he wanted to argue, is purely a matter of the flow of beneficent energy one gets from a fixed source, whether it be a flood or a mere trickle.
Not so, argued the sagacious queen; one’s status is ever a matter of Divine decree (imra being viewed as a pun on amar, “say”). If the king’s view reflects reality, then whether one is rich or poor should be a fixed condition, immutable, based on the mazzal established for one at birth. Yet, one can see that the rich can become poor, and vice versa. Hence, one’s status is a matter of continual review in the Divine tribunal; what G-d decrees will be the case.
They decided to put the matter to the kohén gadol, who was expert in the sacrifices offered daily in the Béyth ha-Miqdash whose purpose is to ensure the well-being of Israel, both as individuals and as a nation, as well as that of the nations of the world. The kohén gadol’s answer shows that he sided with the queen. If prosperity or poverty were purely a matter of gadya/gad, then the condition is tamida, “constant, continual” (which is the literal meaning of the name of sacrifice offered twice daily in the Béyth ha-Miqdash).
After citing the Vikkuha Rabba’s explanation of this gëmara, the Haqal Yitzhaq quotes another, in apparent support: אין מזל לישראל (“Israel has no mazzal”; שבת קנ"ו. ונדרים ל"ב.), i.e. Israel’s prosperity does not involve a fixed source of metaphysical energy, unlike that of the other nations, but is wholly dependent upon Ha-Shem’s decree. However, Tosafoth ad loc. cite another, seemingly contradictory gëmara: בני חיי ומזוני לאו בזכותא תליא אלא במזלא (“Life, children, and sustenance are not dependent on merit but on mazzal”; מועד קטן כ"ח.), on which they conclude מכל מקום על ידי זכות גדול משתנה אבל פעמים שאין המזל משתנה (“Nonetheless through a great merit it may change, but sometimes the mazzal does not change”), i.e. mazzal has some measure of influence on an individual human being’s cir-cumstances. The Rebbe notes that the gimatriya, the numerical value, of the Aramaic mazzala (used in the above-cited gëmara), 78, is the same as that of lehem, וזהו "כי לא על הלחם לבדו" על המזלא "יחי' האדם כי על כל מוצא פי ד'" דהיינו אומרא במאמר הקב"ה "יחי' האדם" ודייקא על הלחם לבדו דהיינו שאינו תלוי במזל לבד אבל המזל מסייעו שיבוא בנקל לקבל ישועת השי"ת במהרה (“and this is ‘that not upon lehem alone’ -- on mazzal -- ‘does a person live, that on kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem’ – i.e., the utterance, by the pronouncement of the Holy One, Blessed is He – ‘does a person live’; and specifically on lehem alone, that is, that he is not dependent upon mazzal alone, but mazzal helps him, that he should come more easily to receive Ha-Shem’s salvation quickly”).
D.
So it is, in fact, just as the Maharal said, that lehem signifies the bare, animal facts of human existence as provided in nature – life, children, sustenance – but the ability to add to it, or to make anything of it, comes by Divine decree. The first is a matter of mazzal (itself a Divine decree, of course, but one made at a distance, by G-d the First Cause and Prime Mover, as opposed to G-d viewed as Israel’s Heavenly Father).
But it is interesting that the Haqal Yitzhaq writes of “dependence” only in connection with this state of nature, this mazzal, the implication being that living ‘al kol motza’ pi Ha-Shem is somehow independence. To see why, I believe, it is necessary to look at the preceding verses in our passage, for life is a test, one whose purpose is to prove, not to Ha-Shem the Omniscient, but to ourselves התשמר את מצותו אם לא, “will we keep His mitzvoth or not.” It is in our power to influence the Divine decree, to bring about the זכות גדול or “great merit” mentioned by Tosafoth, by deliberately choosing a life of Torah and mitzvoth.
A salient thought, as we move toward the month of Elul, whose letters, comprising the initials of אני לדודי ודודי לי, “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine”; Song of Songs VI, 3), proclaim the opportunity for tëshuva through G-d’s closeness, in preparation for the New Year and Yom Kippur.
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