Sermon: On manna and miracles

Written by Rabbi Josh Levy — 30 January 2021

Just before Rosh Hashanah – five months which feels like a lifetime ago – I was invited onto BBC London to speak with Vanessa Feltz about the High Holy Days in the context of the pandemic.

At the end of the conversation, Vanessa threw me a curveball.
“How can a loving God”, she asked, “Allow for something like this pandemic to happen?”

Unprepared for this sudden change in tack, I mumbled something about how this was the wrong question;
that the real religious question is not why things happen, but rather how we respond.

When we read a portion like ours this morning, though, it is understandable why this was the question that she asked.
When we read miracle stories such as that of the Manna; when our foundational narratives tell us of a God who intervenes in the world – acting in wondrous ways against the natural order on behalf of human beings – I surely shouldn’t have been so surprised to be asked why this intervention is not happening for us.

As we have read the narratives of Exodus this month, we have reached the horrible figure of 100,000 deaths from Covid in the UK alone, over 25,000 just in January. Is it unreasonable to ask the question that Vanessa put to me?

Indeed, this is the very question put by Gideon in the Book of Judges, in our haftarah this morning: “If the Eternal is with us, why has all this befallen us?” he asks, “Where are all God’s wondrous deeds about which our ancestors told us, saying, ‘Truly the Eternal brought us up from Egypt’?”

Gideon heard the same stories that we have – stories of Exodus, God-given food, divinely inspired military victory. Might we not ask, with him, ‘Where are all God’s wondrous deeds?

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Of course, this is not a question unique to us and our time. It is one of those fundamental religious challenges grappled with for thousands of years, including by the rabbis who built the Judaism that we live. They too had to struggle with this dissonance – on the one hand reading miracle portions like ours from Torah; on the other, trying to understand them in the context of their own, often difficult lives.

One of their most famous responses is a tradition found in Pirkei Avot. It tells us that the manna was one of 10 things created on the Eve of the first Shabbat, at the end of the sixth day of creation. The manna was created along with other miracle things: the rainbow which appeared after the flood; the mouth of the earth that swallowed Korach and his followers after their rebellion; Balaam’s talking donkey, Moses’ staff which brought plagues to Egypt, which parted the sea. These supernatural occurrences, outside of the normal workings of the world, were created together as the final act of Creation.

This is an enormously important text.

It asserts that the biblical miracles should be understood as built in to the universe: pre-ordained, pre-prepared. By this, the rabbis circumscribe the miracles we read about, limit them to be only of the narrative; these wondrous deeds are only of their time.

In effect, the rabbis thereby deny God – or rather as they understand it, God self-denies – the ability to continually intervene in the world. Rather, it asserts that the natural order is supreme, and that its subversion – as happens in the story of the manna, in this week’s portion, or the parting of the sea before it – is not something that we should then expect to see in our lives.

Thus, it is not that we are somehow unworthy of divine intervention – “Now the Eternal has abandoned us…” as Gideon puts it – but rather that such miracles are limited to our narratives – cannot be expected, cannot be relied upon, even asked for, because the world is as it is. The natural order is not overturned for us, whatever pain it might bring.

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As always, when I bring a rabbinic text, I add an important caveat. Ours is a poly-vocal tradition. This is not the only rabbinic voice. As anyone who has studied Talmud will know, the possibility of the supernatural is accepted as part of their life. But this miracle world, I would suggest, should be seen as literary rather than as a theological statement. To quote Rabbi Louis Jacobs:
“What is now called the natural order is seen as the usual manifestation of divine providence”.

Importantly, this is not just a hypothetical question for the rabbis – it is also a question about how to live. And it is for us too.

While rabbinic literature may contain stories of wonderful things happening to especially pious figures, the Bavli is clear that this should not be, cannot be, even for them, an expectation, part of how they go about their lives.

So, for example, in the Bavli, we read the opinion of Rabbi Yannai “l’olam al ya’amod adam bimkom sakanah lomar she-osin lo neis’ – A person should never stand in a place of danger saying that they – (God and the angels) will perform a miracle for them. “She-ma ein osin lo neis” – perhaps they will not perform a miracle for them.

Rabbi Yannai, incidentally is noteworthy because, while the Talmud tells us that there were some rabbis who when faced with the question of whether it was safe to cross a river in a ferry (a very real issue in their lives), while some would look at who else was in it, and decide based on the possibility of God sinking the boat to punish them, Yannai’s approach was more grounded – he would look at the ferry and decide based on whether he thought it was capable of making the crossing without sinking. Yannai the realist, present in this world, would definitely be complying with Covid guidelines, and queuing up for the vaccine.

And it wasn’t just Yannai who behaved in this way. The Gemara relates that Rav and Shmuel would normally walk around a rickety old wall in Nehardea – gravity is what it is, even if you are the heads of the two great yeshivot of Babylonia. Elsewhere we read that Rabbi Zeira – a man for whom extraordinary things were not uncommon, someone for whom we would expect miracles – Rabbi Zeira would not even go out and walk among the palm trees on a day when there was a strong south wind blowing.
Why? Because he feared that the trees might fall on him and didn’t expect that God would get involved on his behalf and subvert the natural order for him.

As an aside, reading such traditions this week, it is hard not to compare them with behaviours in some parts of the ultra-Orthodox world in the face of Covid, which has received such widespread coverage this week. There is, of course, a complex set of explanations behind the very problematic pattern of non-compliance that we have heard about. But whatever the explanations, what is beyond question is that this behaviour is not in line with the example of Rabbi Yannai and Rabbi Zeira, the expectations expressed in the Bavli, with its very strong message of personal responsibility.

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This is the key idea articulated by our tradition.

When we read the miracle stories of our foundational narrative, we may be tempted to ask the question of Gideon – why do these stories not apply to us.
We may see it as an act of abandonment, or fall into religious despair.

But the rabbis caution against reading the stories this way. They wish us to see them firmly as part of our story, not as part of our present. And to focus instead on who we are and what we do.

Five months on, despite everything we have faced, the answer to Vanessa’s question, a question that probably shouldn’t have taken me by surprise, the answer remains the same. The real religious question, the real Jewish question, our question should not be why things happen, why God doesn’t intervene on our behalf whatever we read in our story, but how we respond.
The rabbis urge us not to wait for the manna, but to take responsibility for our well-being and that of those around us.