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A month after the miracles of the Exodus, the “magic” starts to wear off and the harsh realities of desert life begin to take their toll. Food is now in short supply and the people complain to Moshe.

In response the people are promised bread from heaven in the mornings and meat in the evening. Of course the miraculous nature of such an event is clear in the formulation of the blessing we make today on bread of “HaMotzi Lechem Min HaAretz.” The natural source for bread is from the earth. God’s subtle message is, “I can turn everything upside down, because I am the One in charge!”

The Israelites as well are surprised by the “bread from heaven” and don’t know what to make of it. In fact they don’t even know what to call it. They use the term “Man Hu?!?” shortened as “Man,” roughly translated as “Whatchamacallit.”

I was always bothered by the Hebrew term “Man,” meaning “What.” Every school child knows that the proper word for “What” in Hebrew is “Mah” and not “Man”! Why does the Torah use the word “man”? Is it that they called it “Man” for another reason and then the Torah went back to try to tie the etymology of the word weakly to “Mah”? We would like to think that the Torah, written by God, is above that.

However as Professor Sarna points out, a study of Semitic languages will yield us the answer. He points out that ending words with “n” is actually very ancient and widespread. In Uggaritic they ended words with “mn” (although it is unknown how they pronounced it) , in the El Amarnah tablets, the ancient Canaanite dialect preserves for us “Manna” and “Mannu” for “what?” Biblical Aramaic as well records the word “Man” for “what” (Ezra 5:4). Jewish Aramaic which is of course older than Biblical Aramaic also used the word “mena”!

Here we see that the Torah being a Torat Emet was simply recording in the exact language what our ancestors said. They said “Man Hu?” because that was the ancient Hebrew that the Israelites used as opposed to the later Hebrew dialect that God chooses to write the Torah in!

This is a perfect example of how studying secular knowledge can deepen and widen our understanding of our Holy Torah. Over the course of this last week, we have explored the strengths and challenges of Modern Orthodoxy in our Modern Orthodoxy Yom Iyun, and we have examined the relationship between halacha and science on our Science and Halacha Day. This is yet one more example of how our Torah lives can be enriched by the study of other disciplines.