The Miracle of Food

The Talmud states: “The task of providing a person’s food is as miraculous as the splitting of the Sea of Reeds.” (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 118a)

Perhaps this explains why only three days after walking through the parted sea the Israelites grumbled against Moses. They arrived at Marah and finding insufficient water cried out, “What shall we drink?” (Exodus 15) If a person does not have enough food to eat and water to drink even the recent memory of a miraculous deliverance is not enough to sustain one’s faith.

The Israelites’ complaint and the Talmud’s affirmation remind us that every meal is indeed a miracle. Is this why the rabbis penned the motzi blessing with the words, “who brings forth bread from the earth?” Everyone knows that bread does not emerge from the ground. The wheat is grown and then harvested. It is ground into flour. It is combined with eggs. After the yeast performs its magic, the baker’s loving hands knead the dough and then only after baking in the oven can it be enjoyed.

Bread is the work of many hands. The wheat grows in nourishing soil. It is sustained by the sun and rain. The bread is dependent on the farmer, miller and baker. It is not like the manna that God miraculously provided to the wandering Israelites. There was always enough manna to eat and according to tradition it tasted like every person’s favorite food.

But the rabbis decreed that every meal should be treated like a miracle. Every morsel is deserving of a blessing. They were intent on transforming the ordinary and making the everyday extraordinary. We recite the motzi and take the spiritual posture that God’s hand is decisive. Even though bread is the product of many hands, we bless only God’s.

“God brings forth bread from the earth,” we exclaim. Then again, I wonder if in our spiritual obsession with the Almighty we forget the many hands whose work is so crucial to our meal’s enjoyment. Even if we remember to thank the cook, we forget to offer praises to the farmer. We might do well recalling that the true miracle is not only about God.

The miracle is instead the community of people who manage to wrest bread from the earth.

Let us then offer a chorus of “Amens” to all the hands that make every meal a wondrous miracle.