בס"ד
So the people are on the brink of absolute despair. After having fallen prey to the trust-dissolving fear sown in their hearts by the spies and their evil reports of a land which devours its inhabitants, after hearing the unimaginably crushing words of Hashem’s measure for measure punishment of wandering and death for forty years, “A year for a day, a year for a day”, after seeking to regain Hashem’s favor by impulsively initiating a sortie to conquer the land, despite Moshe’s warning – “Hashem is not in your midst” and being summarily routed . . . what could possibly comfort and console them? What could possibly motivate them to pack up camp, hit the trail, and resume a journey to a promised land never to be seen, entry having deferred for a whole generation.
I know! Bread and wine, that always does the trick!
What? Are you crazy? A whole people is in existential crisis of the most profound and threatening nature, and you’re talking food?
But that’s precisely what Hashem does. Immediately following the debacle of the ma’apilim (those who seek to storm the land against Hashem’s instructions), Hashem gives the mitzvah of bringing wine libations along with the sacrificial offerings previous commanded in Vayikra as well as the mitzvah of taking hallah from the dough and giving it to the Kohen, precisely as is done at an earlier stage of the field-to-kitchen process with terumah. Why now? Why here?
The Ramban explains, in his introduction to B’midbar, that the mitzvot which are scattered throughout the narratives of B’midbar are all those which were temporary in nature, directly connect to the transit through the desert; the only mitzvot which apply for all generations which appear in B’midbar are those which were begun in Vayikra but left unfinished – here, they are finished.
But this begs the question – WHY were these mitzvot left unfinished in Vayikra? Why isn’t hallah taught together with terumah? Why isn’t the law of wine libations not brought when the original commandments are given regarding the sacrifices?
The Ramban suggests that, as these two mitzvot are introduced with the formula, “when you come to the land…”, “in your coming into the land”, they have the effect of consoling the people. By giving these mitzvot immediately after punishing the people for their treachery against the land, Hashem effectively reaffirms His absolute commitment to His promise to bring the people to the land so that they may serve Him and establish there the visionary society in whose midst Hashem may dwell.
But how does giving more mitzvot console? Is there perhaps something more than consolation at work here? And why these two – mitzvot relating to bread and wine?
With apologies to anyone passionately devoted to raw food – processed food is one of the greatest gifts Hashem has given human beings. Cooking, cutting, chopping grinding, squeezing, mixing, marinating – the list is as long as the Joy of Cooking – all of these actions are human “interference” with the “natural” process of picking and chewing that, say, apes engage in. Human food processing can release the many nutrients and benefits, flavors and other potentials hidden within the plenty Hashem provides, or it can destroy them – it all depends upon how it’s done.
When you pick grapes, if you squeeze them and collect the juice and store it away in certain types of containers in just the right conditions for the right amount of time, the result is a delicious, powerfully affecting beverage that has shaped human society for good and bad; if you do it wrong, you get vinegar!
When you grind wheat, mix it with water and knead it and knead it - it's all in the wrist - then let it sit in an environment that just happens to contain yeast spores, you get a marvelously flavorful and full textured loaf; if something isn’t right, the result is a nutritious, unchewable rock!
Hashem has places within the wheat and the grape a potential unlocked by a process called fermentation. When mastered, it takes those “raw materials” to a whole different level, adding enjoyment, impact and “shelf-live”, but if allowed to proceed without our intervention, that same process takes the food to its destruction.
No wonder we say special blessings on bread and wine, we have special mitzvot which relate to bread and wine. Bread amongst foodstuffs and wine amongst beverages are the testimony to the covenant of partnership between Hashem and human beings. He places the potential within creation, we are bidden to bring it forth. And it’s not a option – we MUST act, we are created to do, to make, to transform, to bring Hashem’s world toward perfection using that drop of godly infinity which is the essence of our beings, our souls.
We CAN refuse to partner with Hashem, as did the people who refused to go up to the land upon hearing the report of the spies, despite Hashem’s effusive praise of the land, or when they acted on our own after the punishment was announced. But if we do so, we are rejecting the extended hand of the Infinite One Who wanted to walk with us in
And the people were reproved; and the people were consoled; and the people packed their things and set forth, setting their sights on a generation hence, one a mission from G-d once again, spying out an Eden in the distance and moving toward it one footstep at a time; one mitzvah at a time.
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