Since my Partner in Torah and I are now learning about the manna, I dusted off a paper I wrote in seminary (many moons ago) to refresh my memory of different lessons we can learn from this topic. (By the way, I couldn’t figure out whether to write it like mohn or manna. I was more inclined to the first but it evokes images of poppy seed hamantaschen, no? Let me know what you think.) Here is some of what I wrote:
- The manna shows future generations that when Bnei Yisroel needed help, it came from somewhere they could have never anticipated: “…that you didn’t know and that your fathers didn’t know” (Devarim 8:3). We learn from here that if we keep the Torah and do the mitzvos, Hashem sends parnassah from a place we would not have anticipated (Yalkut Me’am Lo’ez on Devarim). I think this can translate to shidduchim: if we try to do the right thing, we don’t need to take responsibility for doing every bit of possible hishtadlus to find our own shidduch. Hashem can send it from anywhere.
- Just as manna was purely spiritual and didn’t have only one taste, yet it sustained them, so too it is with every food — it only has a taste and texture and ability to sustain us because that’s what Hashem decided at that moment for that food; its physical “reality” is really an illusion (Rav Yerucham Levovits). The same with shidduchim: it might look like certain people have the ability to make shidduchim and we need to rely on their attention and good favor, yet in reality it’s an illusion — at any given moment, Hashem can decide to use any person as His messenger.
- Many meforshim discuss how the great nisayon of the manna was that every night, Bnei Yisroel had to go to sleep without leaving any food over, and had to trust that in the morning they would find more. In shidduchim — every night (and day) we need to trust in a future we can’t see, that just because we’re out of options now, doesn’t mean that tomorrow can’t bring new possibilities. That we’ll have exactly what we need when we need it, even if it has to fall from the sky. That no matter what nerves and anxiety we or the people around us might be experiencing, Hashem has it all taken care of and we have to let it happen when it happens. That no matter how dark the night, the sun rises on a field sparkling with dew.
Thanks for sharing. These are such calming food for thought in a time when everything is topsy turvy.
I think I would spell it mon.
I read somewhere to daven for a shidduch in Bareich aleinu because a spouse is as essential a need as sustenance, in a way both are considered parnassa.