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Manna and the True Essence of the Sabbath

Jan. 22 2016

The biblical commandment to keep the Sabbath first appears in Exodus 16 (part of this week’s Torah reading), several chapters before the giving of the Ten Commandments. The context is the manna that falls from heaven to nourish the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert. Moses explains that on the first five days of the week the Israelites must gather only what they will eat for that day; on the sixth, they should collect enough for both that day and the next, the Sabbath day when no manna will fall. Ethan Tucker argues that the story of the manna is crucial to understanding the essence of the day of rest:

Why couldn’t the manna be gathered on Shabbat morning? It is, after all, food, and there would seem to be no real impediment to handling and consuming it on the Sabbath itself. The focus here on preparation seems to be key: if the goal of Shabbat is to experience an already-completed world [as God did on the first, primordial Sabbath of Genesis 2:2], then we cannot have a system where one’s [main source of] sustenance only materializes halfway through the day.

Moses emphasizes that all baking and cooking of the manna must take place before Shabbat [even though] there has not yet been any articulation of a Sabbath ban on work at this point in the Torah. Instead, his directive seems focused on having everything ready in advance. It is this state of affairs, more than a set of behaviors, that will establish Shabbat as truly holy, the sense that as the day enters, I have everything I need, just exactly as I need it.

Read more at Mechon Hadar

More about: Exodus, Hebrew Bible, Judaism, Moses, Religion & Holidays, Shabbat

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic