[Avodah] RSRH on Devarim 8:3 - a Message for our Times?

[Yitzchok Levine]

The following is from the new translation of 
RSRH's commentary on Chumash.  As I read it, I 
could help but think of the Chillul HaShem that has occurred recently. YL

Devarim 8:3  He had you live in want; He let you 
go hungry, and then He fed you with the manna 
which you did not know and your fathers did not
know, in order to teach you that not on bread 
alone can man live; rather, man can live on 
anything that comes from the mouth of God.

Bread is the joint product of nature and of the intelligence with
which man masters the world. Thus, bread represents the intelligence by
which man, through social cooperation, produces the means of his existence.

But it would be erroneous to believe that this creative human power
is the sole requirement for man’s existence on earth. The prime factor in
man’s sustenance is God’s providence; His generous care is evident in
every morsel of bread with which we sustain yet another moment of our
existence. To forget this would mean to fall prey to a most dangerous
delusion on which our devotion to duty would founder. The concern to
provide for one’s wife and children is in itself such a legitimate motive
for our activities that it could easily cause us to lose sight of all other
considerations, once we persuade ourselves that we and only we ourselves
can provide our own sustenance and that of our dependents. We could
then persuade ourselves that any gain wrested from nature and from our
fellow men will assure our sustenance and that of our dependents regardless
of the means we employ for this purpose. If this is our attitude, then
we will not care whether, in so doing, we observe God’s commandments,
earning our daily bread only by means within the limits shown us by
God, or whether we obtain our sustenance by skillful manipulation without
considering whether God would approve of our methods.

Even if the notion that we can look to human power alone for our
daily bread will not cause us to stray from the 
paths of duty and righteousness,
it may well lead our thoughts beyond the necessities of the immediate
present, further and further into the remote future, so that we
will come to think that we have not done our duty unless we have assured
the means not only for own future but also for the future of our children
and grandchildren. As a result, the concern for breadwinning will become
an endless race, leaving us neither time nor energy for purely spiritual
and moral concerns.

That is why God led us for forty years in the wilderness. There, in the
absence of all the factors that normally enable man to win his bread
through a combination of natural resources and human energy, He
brought out in sharp relief the one factor which under normal circumstances
is only too easily ignored. Instead of nourishing us with the bread
that bears the stamp of human achievement, He fed us with the manna
allotted by God alone, and He had it come to us day after day, to every soul
in our humble dwellings, in a manner that clearly demonstrated God’s
personal care for every soul, both great and small. Hence, in this course
of preparatory training for our future life, we learned the following basic
truth: Human existence does not depend on bread alone — i.e., on the
natural and human resources represented by bread. Rather, man can live
by anything that God ordains. Even the bread that he obtains by his own
skill is ordained by God. Therefore, man is not lost if, for the sake of his
allegiance to God, he is compelled to forgo all that can be obtained from
human and natural resources; indeed, man must know that even in the
midst of plenty derived from the resources of man and nature, he still owes
his sustenance solely to God’s special care. (See Commentary, Shemos 16.) 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20090806/eaf12f2d/attachment-0001.htm>