From the Head of Jewish Life
Rabbi Daniel Siegel
“Man does not live on bread alone”
It is said that upon hearing that the poor had no bread, Marie Antoinette remarked: “Let them eat cake” (Qu’ils mangent de la brioche).
While this story, first reported by the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, is almost certainly apocryphal (it was most likely said by an earlier French Queen, Marie-Therese), there is no doubt that this is not what our Torah has in mind when it says, in this week’s parashah, “Man does not live on bread (לחם/ lechem) alone”.
Indeed, if we consider the Arabic cognate of “lehem”, which means meat, lechem here does not mean only bread, but food of subsistence, one’s staple diet. While brioche cannot replace “bread” (and surely if you can’t afford the latter, you will not be eating the former), “bread”, only the most basic of human needs (Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”), is in no wise sufficient for personal self – fulfillment and actualisation.
Significantly, the Hebrew word for war, מלחמה/milchamah is of the same root word for “bread”,לחם/lechem. History is marked with battles for “bread”. As parents and educators, we seek to have our children and students look beyond a future that is focused on and limited to “bread”, whether understood literally or in its slang connotation of money -“dough”.
What “man cannot live on bread alone” means, in our parashah, is indicated by the words that immediately follow: “But on all that the Divine brings forth”. Considering this specific Biblical context within our contemporary society, one may read this as saying manna (מן/man) means more than money (ממון/mamon).
The following video, by the renowned Australian philosopher and ethicist Peter Singer, currently professor at Princeton University, provides a context for us to consider further how we might understand the words of our Torah, “Man does not live on bread alone”, and what might make for manna in today’s world.