Parashat Ekev: What was Hard about the Manna

Why is the man (manna) that we ate in the desert viewed as a nisayon, a test or a challenge? What was so hard about eating food that God provided each day?

I think the key to the challenge lies in the description of the man as a substance asher lo yadata, “which you didn’t know,” and, the Torah goes on to say, “which your ancestors didn’t know” either.

What was difficult about the man experience, what made it a nisayon, is that it was new, unfamiliar, something no one had ever encountered before.

New things are hard for us. The children started school this week and the first week is always a bit stressful. Taking a new job, entering a new school, moving to a new city, even driving to a new place can be a challenge.

Why? I think part of it is that new experiences make us feel insecure. We don’t know for sure the outcome. When we enter a new situation, the burning question is: will it work out? Will I make friends in this new place? Will I have enough to eat? Will I have enough time to do the work? Will I be successful? When we have been in that situation before, we know from past experience that it does work out and so we can relax. But in a new situation, we doubt—maybe that road doesn’t actually go to that place; maybe I can’t do this work -- we worry, we lack trust.

For the Israelites in the desert, the man was a challenge because they were used to normal food – you grow it, you fish it, you hunt it, you buy it from someone else who did one of those things. And then you cook it and eat it and you can rely on it to sustain you. But this new thing that appears with the morning dew – can it be relied on in the same way? Will it nourish us in the same way, help our children grow, keep us properly nourished? How do we know it will work out? How do we know it will continue, keep coming each morning, when we have no historical knowledge to rely on and we are not involved in the planting? How do we know that all will be well?

How do we ever know? The truth is that even in normal situations, which are not “new” to us, change happens and we cannot really rely on the predictability and stability of life remaining static. We took a vacation this year next to a river in West Virginia and I was struck by the constancy of the river flow. The water, the current, is always moving – sometimes slower, sometimes faster – but always moving. Change, new things, are actually the norm.

So how do we approach the river of life? How do we encounter the changes, the new situations? They are indeed a nisayon, a challenge, and I think a challenge that asks us, like the Israelites in the desert, to continually develop a greater level of bitahon, trust in God. Trust is the antidote to insecurity; trust provides the balance to ride through the rapids. It is a moment of complete relaxation; the ground will hold us; we do not need to struggle and fight to make it happen; we can trust that each morning we will wake up and find the man, find what we need in this world. In a new situation, we may not know how things will work out, but trusting means having faith that they will work out in the way that they are meant to work out and we can relax and do our best, not out of a sense of frenzied anxiety or insecurity, but out of a sense of joy and trust that it is right to do our part and the world is in good hands.