Rabbi Nosson Spira, the author of Megaleh Amukos and beloved Rov of Krakow, had decided to leave his post. No amount of entreating would change his decision. His mind was made up. On the day he was supposed to leave, he suddenly announced that he was going to stay. The town was absolutely overjoyed. When asked what prompted his change of mind, he explained, on the street corner of the main road, there’s a poor man who sells bread.
He walks up and down the road with his cart, selling the bread his wife bakes at home. Recently, a wealthy man encountered this poor fellow and recognized him from his yeshiva days. You’re such a talmid chacham. Why are you standing on the street? You should be studying in the beis midrash! Let’s make a deal.
I will pay you a monthly stipend and you will be able to learn Torah. You will have no worries of parnassah. The poor talmid chacham happily agreed. So imagine the wealthy man’s surprise when only a few short months later he found the poor man once again at the corner selling bread. Just today, these two men came to me with a Din Torah, Rav Nosson Spira continued.
The poor man wanted to renege on the deal, but the wealthy man did not want to relinquish his zechus of sponsoring this talmid chacham’s Torah learning. “Why do you want to stop this arrangement?,” asked the Megaleh Amukos. “What’s wrong?” The poor man explained. “At first, it was a dream come true. I was able to learn Torah with no worries, but then my wife and I noticed something troubling.
When I was selling bread, our entire day was filled with prayers. We would pray that we would find ample dry firewood for the oven. We would pray that the bread would come out tasty and gourmet, and that we would be able to sell all the bread we baked that day. We were constantly davening to Hashem, but now with your generous stipend, we don’t have to worry about our parnassah and so we stopped davening with the same frequency and intensity.
That is why I want to stop our deal. I don’t want to lose out on that special dimension of my relationship with Hashem.”
When such a din Torah and such a community concluded the megaleh Amukos, I realized that Krakow is where I really want to be. In this week’s parshah, we read of the Jewish people’s dramatic complaint about the mon.
“We are disgusted by this rotten bread,” they said. The commentaries ask a simple question. “Why were the Yiddin complaining about the mon’s taste?” The mon was able to taste like anything they wished. What was there to complain about?
The Alshich hakadosh provides a deep psychological insight that is ever so relevant.
It wasn’t the quality of the mon that bothered the Yiddin. It was the quantity. Each day, only a precise amount of mon would fall. Enough for that day alone. There was no extra mon to put away for later. There was no sense of security. Every day one had to rely on the mon falling from heaven to be able to eat.
And that is what the Yidden were complaining about. They craved the security, the sense of control that they lacked. The mon made them uncomfortable because it took things out of their hands and made it clear that it was always in Hashem’s hands to eat. The mon was like this by design. The midrash gives the analogy of a king who provides for all of his son’s needs.
When he gave him everything at the beginning of the year, the prince forgot about his father and didn’t reach out the entire year. So the king changed the system to a daily stipend, and suddenly the king was interacting with his son every day. So the mon that fell from the sky kept our gaze fixed up high.
This is exactly what the poor talmid chacham realized when he stopped selling bread. The stress and worry of making a living may have worn him down, but it made sure that he was always looking up. The responsibility of bringing home a parnassah every day is our bespoke invitation to talk to Hashem and pray.
Wishing you a wonderful Shabbos.
