Thanks to Yigal Deutscher for this guest post.

We have just begun the Sefirat HaOmer, counting off the direct correlation between Pesach & Shavuot, two celebrations separated by a string 50 days long. These are two moments in time, interwoven, yet at polar opposites. On Day 1, we have left bread behind, as Chametz. On Day 50, we are elevating bread as an offering in the Holy Temple, a sacrifice unique to the day of Shavuot. A serious transformation has just taken place.

The link between our starting point and our destination goal is food, bread in particular. This corridor of time marks the counting of grain ripening…from the start of the barley harvest to the start of the wheat harvest.

And just like no moment in time stands alone, no seed of grain stands alone, separate from its mother plant. So the counting is not just the story of this year’s grain harvest…it is the story of grain, and bread, in general. All our labor over the months, all the collective rains from the winter season, all this energy is now stored in these tiny seeds….and as we watch their ripening, as we anticipate the harvest, we count…and we become aware.

Jews say, “If there is no flour, there is no Torah”. We might as well say, “If there is no bread, there is no modern human history.”

Wheat & barley grow wild in the valleys of Israel, plants native to this landscape. These were two of the first plants to become “crops,” to be domesticated by human, colonized right here in Israel, in the southern tip of the Fertile Crescent. The product of their flour, bread, is the symbol of agriculture. And it fits perfectly. We may bless “Who brings forth bread from the earth,” but there are 10 full steps needed to go from seed to final product, most of which are human powered and occur post-harvest.

With bread in hand & mouth, humans can boast of their powers over nature, an unparalleled refinement process, an alchemy from seed to fluffy, wholesome, filling & nutritious loaves of bread. And the honor we afford bread is evident every time we follow the hierarchy of berachot at meal time. If bread is to be eaten, its blessing is recited first, an umbrella blessing for all other foods. And when we must bless wine first, we cover the bread so the poor loaves will not be embarrassed.

And here we are in the Pesach holiday, stepping away from bread in a complete detox. So what’s the story with bread? And how do we go from shunning it to turning it into a holy offering in the Temple?

The Hebrew people entered the Land of Egypt free, as a celebrated & honored tribe. But they also entered in tension. It was the ancient meeting of Cain & Abel, on replay. In this version, the pastoralist has entered into the agriculturalist’s empire, a powerful land thriving on the overflowing abundance of the Nile River, sustaining an agricultural system large enough to fuel this empire’s growth. The Hebrews, as shepherds, were granted the lush pastures of the land of Goshen, where they could live their pastoral dreams, separate from the rest of the nation.

But peace between the agriculturalist & the pastoralist never lasts long. The root for the word bread, LECHEM, is the same root shared by the word for war, MILCHAMA. There is no coincidence in the Hebrew language. Every word is a symbol for another, showing the interconnectedness of all things we speak of. Cain, the first farmer, was also the first murderer. And now the Hebrews were about to get a taste of that reality.

Agriculture creates plenty of wealth and just as many demons to haunt your wallet. More food than ever imagined leads to more people than ever imagined, to social class systems, to specializations in the labor force & the creation of a priestly sect and a military, to raising animals as machines & cultivating their diseases, to land wealth & a real estate market, to the creation of metal tools…and weapons, and to the creation of land owners and…slaves. The original curse from the Garden of Eden was not just a curse of working the land but the ripple effect of how working the land would cripple us.

The slavery the Hebrew tribes entered was not unique. It was a disease spreading wherever agricultural systems were growing, one just as prevalent today as it was in Biblical times. Egypt was a thriving Empire, founded on the wealth the Nile brought and the agriculture it allowed. Just as the farmer-society mines natural resources, it must also mine a labor force. And that labor force usually comes from the peoples still living in the hunter-gatherer/pastoral reality, a people less wealthy & with less military strength.

So when we left the slavery in Egypt, we also left her agriculture & her bread behind. And on our way out, we found ourselves eating Matza, this unleavened, unfermented grain product. But Matza is just the top and bottom of a sandwich without a filling. The filling is Mana, our nourishment for 40 years in the desert, which ceased only after we first entered Israel and once again, ate Matza, to commemorate the start of this tale.

Mana is as far from bread, from Chametz, as possible. There is no volume, no body. There is no human involvement, there is no farmer, there is no ego of accomplishment and no taming of natural ecosystems. It is nourishment straight from the Source of Life. And this humble, simple Mana is what prepared the Hebrew tribes to complete the transition themselves, from nomadic shepherd tribes to agriculturalists. Because they were not just running from Egypt…they were traveling towards Israel, a land that would be their home, where they would live with her plants, her soils, and her seasons. They themselves would finally become the farmers.

In Israel, the Hebrews return to bread. But the grains they cultivate, the bread they craft, is not bread of slavery or enslavement. It is an offering to the Divine. It is agriculture with the hidden seed of Mana, of humility before the natural flows and graces of the Creator. It is agriculture with the wisdom of the practices of Orlah, Bikkurim, Peah, Shmita, and Kelayim. This is the offering on Shavuot, the product of a refined agriculture, where the human hands threshing, winnowing, grinding, and baking are no different than the rains germinating the seeds or the soil microorganisms feeding the plant’s roots…all parts of the One.