He made you hungry,
He made you starve, He fed you manna… (Deut. 8:3)
Torah could only be
given to people who had consumed manna. (Midrash Tanchuma 20:2)
It wasn’t that manna didn’t satisfy hunger.
Manna was food, nourishing food. But it was food that caused you to feel
dissatisfied. That was its nourishment.
Your manna might have tasted to you like a
succulent grilled steak. But it was a spiritual, not a tangible experience—and
that left you yearning for something beyond that experience, something a
physical body could never really have.
This was crucial to the plan. As the rabbis
taught, “The secrets of Torah can be transmitted only to one whose heart
troubles him incessantly from inside.”...