Bread from the Sky, Bread from the Earth

Ekev 5776/27 August 2016

My favorite challah, unquestionably, is the whole-wheat challah from my friend Michael Dolich’s Four Worlds Bakery in West Philly. They’re 100% whole wheat, but they’re moist and just sweet enough, and not too heavy. They’re naturally fermented, so they’re just a little tangy, and they are made with wheat they mill freshly themselves. The extra effort and care adds to the taste of his breads, and it’s always a treat to grace my Shabbat table with Michael’s challot.

I went through a brief bread-baking phase myself, still I typically take for granted the complexity of the bread on my table. From seed to harvest to the baking, effort, human ingenuity and technology are required to transform grain into bread.  

And that is why the blessing over bread is so intriguing-“Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.” “You, Adonai, are the Source of Blessing, who brings forth bread from the earth. All other berakhot that we make before eating foods focus on God being the source of blessing who created that food: “borei p’ri ha’etz”- Who created the fruit of the tree, “…borei p’ri ha’adamah”- Who created the fruit of the earth, etc. Not so, for bread. Before eating bread, we say, “…Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz.” That statement requires some creative interpretation. The use of the verb hamotzi– who “removes” or “brings forth”- is curious. We know that bread doesn’t come out of the earth fully formed. In fact, for millennia bread has been the paradigm of processed food. On the surface, the blessing of Hamotzi is theologically difficult. If we dig a little deeper, though, the berakhah of Hamotzi can teach us an important lesson about the spirituality of food.

In this week’s parashah Moses continues his epic farewell address to the second generation of Israelite wilderness wanderers, encamped on the plains of Moab opposite the Promised Land. Today, he’s talking about how to living rightly with the land they will soon enter, in gratitude for the earth and all she provides. He begins with reflections on the manna:

Moshe continues, talking about the “good land” and its bounty of wheat and barley, vines, figs pomegranates, olive and date honey, and advises that, “When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to Adonai your God for the good land which God has given you. V’akhaltah, vesava’atah u’veirakhtah et Adonai elohekhah ‘al ha’aretz hatovah asher natan lakh.” This message, this mitzvah, is the basis for all the berakhot, all the blessings we recite both after and before eating.

Imagine what Moshe’s message meant to the people.  This generation of Israelites standing on the banks of the Jordan had their whole lives known nothing but desert life, had eaten nothing but man. They might have heard the stories of the massive fruit collected by the scouts, but they had never tasted fruit themselves. They had never planted seeds or watched them sprout and grow and blossom. For them, manna from heaven was commonplace, d’var yom b’yomo. Food from the ground? Now that’s a miracle. Soon they would be in Israel immersed in the wonders of the land.

But as we all know wonder dissipates quickly. “Take care,” Moshe tells them:

When you have bounty, Moshe tells the people, it is easy to take for granted the abundance of blessing and forget to express gratitude. Given that the Israelites where to become an agrarian people, it makes sense that Moshe teaches them this lesson in the context of food. But there’s a deep message here about food and relating to the material world that Moshe is teaching.

This world is full of godliness. When we consume food, or otherwise derive some benefit from the material world, we have an opportunity to grow closer to God. We can chose either to relate to the world in a way that purely serves our own physical needs or desires, or we can bring our awareness to the life force that is present in the natural world, and utilize that life force, those sparks to better ourselves and our world.

Sacred sparks are present in all of the created world- animal, vegetable and mineral. And within each of us. The work of tikkun, of repairing the world, is to discern the light, to clarify and elevate the sparks and connect them with their divine source.

This work of tikkun was the ultimate purpose of life in the Promised Land that the Israelites were about to enter, and this is the lesson that Moshe is teaching here in Parashat Eikev, by bracketing the discussion of food with mention of the manna. The man was an embodied lesson in the divine light inherent in all of creation, and particularly in our food. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein, the 18th century Chassidic master knowm as the Ma’or Vashemesh talks about the inner essence of food, p’nimiut hama’akhal. The man, he writes was all inner essence. It was a fully spiritual substance in material form. Unlike other material, which requires us to be able to discern the divine light within it, the p’nimiut, the man was pre-discerned, if you will.

The lesson of the man, Moshes tells Israel, was to teach them that “Humanity does not live on bread alone but that humans may live on anything Adonai decrees,” “ki lo ‘al halechem l’vado yichyeh ha’adam, ki ‘al kol motzah pi Adonai yichyeh ha’adam.” Or, to translate it differently, our life is sustained by all that emanates from God’s mouth, so-to-speak, kol motzah pi Adonai.  According to Ma’or Va’Shemesh, the sacred sparks that animate this world are called motzah. The lesson of the man was that it is not simply the nutritional content of the food that nourish and sustain us, it is also the sparks of divine light, inherent in the food that sustain us.

That message was easier to internalize for people whose only foodstuff was man, for a generation unencumbered by the rigors of living off the land. The challenge, Moshe was teaching, would come when the Israelites entered the Land, and discerning the inner essence of our food would require greater mindfulness and intention. In the Promised Land, when food required investment, creativity and toil, when one would reap the fruit of one’s own labor, it would be a challenge to remember that anything that one had was as a result of a divine life force, which in every moment animates all of creation, including the Israelite herself. It would be a challenge to remember, and in that awareness to offer gratitude.

Moshe’s lesson continues:

“V’amartah bilvavekhah: kochi v’otzem yadi ‘asah li et hachayyil hazeh. V’zachartah et Adonai eloheikhah, ki hu hanotein lekhah koach la’asot chayyil.” True, the power and might of your own hand won this bounty for you, Moshe says, but remember: it is Adonai your God who give the koach, the life force, the potentiality inherent in all creation, renewed in every moment, that allows you to have such bounty.

Which brings us back to the berakhah of Hamotzi. As I said earlier, the choice to describe God as Hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz seems strange. If we see the Hamotzi as a reference to the sacred sparks- to the linguistically related word motzah– it takes on a whole new level of meaning. Of all the blessings over food, it is specifically when giving thanks to the Holy One of Blessing upon eating bread—the paradigm of food created by humans—that we reflect on our partnership with God in the stewardship of the earth, that we remember the divine sparks inherent in all of creation, that, just as the man– the “bread of the heavens” was full of “motzah”- of divine energy, so too does divine light inhere in lechem min ha’aretz, bread of the earth. It is that divine light that allowed us, with the addition of human sweat and ingenuity to produce bread, and it is the “motzah” in the lechem that sustains us, along with the nutrients.

The berakhot, the blessings over food, can be a powerful tool. If we bring our full awareness, taking a moment to reflect before and after we eat can help us cultivate gratitude for the blessings in our life both great and small. The food we are blessed to eat not only gives us pleasure, it sustains us and strengthens us. Reciting a berakhah before eating is an opportunity to reflect on our partnership with God in building and perfecting this precious world of ours, in tikkun olam, and to offer a prayer that we may have the strength to continue to do so. Berakhot are also an opportunity to think about all of the effort and all of the people involved in getting the food to us. We will soon go up to kiddush. Before you eat, you might take a moment to reflect on where the cookies and the fruit came from. Who grew the fruit? Who harvested the grain and baked the cookies? How did it get here? Who served it? You might take the opportunity to express gratitude to Gregory and Brian, and to the talented and creative Alicia, who cooks such delicious food for us whenever we have a special kiddush.

We will soon enter into the month of Elul, the month of preparation before the Days of Awe. I’d like to suggest that this Elul you might take upon yourself the practice of eating mindfully. Notice what the food looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like. Think of how the food got from its sources to your table. Eat only what truly sustains and nourishes you. Let your body guide you; it knows what it needs. When you eat, think of the ways in which you are working to better this world, in whatever form that may take, and set the intention for the food you are eating to fuel that work. And finally, whether you choose to recite a set blessing, speak the words of your heart or pause silently, do so with kavannah, with intention. Remember the motzah and remember, the divine sparks. That it is Adonai your God who gives us the koach– the life force- that allows us to have such bounty.

Tags: Blessings, Food, Mindful Eating