Hebrew Bible Study
Hebrew Bible Study

Chasidut for Numbers 11:7

וְהַמָּ֕ן כִּזְרַע־גַּ֖ד ה֑וּא וְעֵינ֖וֹ כְּעֵ֥ין הַבְּדֹֽלַח׃

Now the manna was like coriander seed, and the appearance thereof as the appearance of bdellium.

Kedushat Levi

Numbers 11,7. “and the manna was like coriander ‎seed;” when a person gives charity to a poor person he is ‎turned into a ‎משפיע‎, a dispenser of largesse. Our sages in ‎‎Vayikra Rabbah 34,8 have taught that contrary to common ‎belief, the recipient of the handout does more for the donor than ‎the donor has done for him. If this is true, the poor man himself ‎is also a dispenser of largesse, as he bestows spiritual merit ‎whereas the wealthy man giving him a handout had only ‎provided physical sustenance.‎
This parable while true, does not hold true when the ‎dispenser of the manna is the Creator, Who by His very nature ‎dispenses spiritual food at the same time as He hands out the ‎manna. Doing tzedakah, performing charitable deeds, is ‎equivalent to planting a seed in the ground which will provide ‎others with sustenance in the future, something that we already ‎learned from Avraham in Genesis 22,33 when he planted an ‎orchard.
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