Ziv: Parashat Yithro 2

In this parasha we read of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, and the Ten Words (or Ten Commandments) that God pronounced for his people. At the heart of these ten statements, we find the commandment to remember the Sabbath day, a sacred and blessed day that one should remember. In the preceding parasha, the Hebrews had been asked not to gather the manna on the Sabbath, and eventually they received twice the quantity of it on Fridays (16:22). This order was given before the giving of the Torah to Moses. This detail was commented on by a famous contemporary rabbi, Rabbi Schneerson, who explained that the Shabbat was actually given in order to keep the memory of the giving of the manna. In Hebrew, “manna” means something that has been prepared, and is ready to be consumed without any particular action like peeling or cooking... The Hebrews asked each other what it was because it was already prepared. When they saw the manna on the ground and they exclaimed: “Mann hou”, which means: it is manna, i.e. a kind of food ready to be eaten. This food coming from heaven is round (“gad” – usually translated as “coriander” - meaning round), a circle that has no beginning and no end like eternity. It is white (16:31), the sum of all colors. The Hebrews may gather a little or a lot, but they shall always have the same quantity of manna: an “omer”, about a handful. And it is said that “over the surface of the wilderness, lay a fine and flaky substance” (16:14). In Hebrew, the word for “fine” is “daq”. Rav Schneorson makes a link with another occurrence of this term in Isaiah 40:22: “He who sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, the inhabitants of which are like grasshoppers, stretches out the heavens like a cloth, spreads them out like a tent to live in.” In Hebrew, the word for “cloth” (i.e. heaven) is also “daq”. The manna is like heaven that comes down to earth.

The gift of the manna has a link with the Sabbath, and the Sabbath rest gives meaning to the manna. The people were asked to keep this manna “from generation to generation” (16:32), which is to say forever, as a memorial. The Sabbath, which is also to be remembered, is given as a memorial of the gift of manna.

The manna, a food that comes from heaven to feed the people in the wilderness, is therefore a food that has to be kept forever, and it will be actually kept in the Ark of the Covenant, with the tables of the law and the rod of Aaron. Shabbat shalom.