Our taste buds change over time. Be it different delicacies that exist where you live and where you move throughout your life, your social circles of where you eat, or the will to try new things, we change what we eat and what we like.
The Torah tells us that as the Israelites traversed the wilderness, God subjected the people to hunger and only then provided manna to eat.
Chzikuni, the Torah commentator, explains: Why could God not bring the manna before the people became hungry? We cannot compare someone who is hungry but has food in their travel bag to someone who is not hungry but does not have food when they will become hungry.
In other words, if God put food in the travel bags as we left Egypt, we would not have needed or wanted to taste the manna from heaven.
Since they were starved, there was no other option than to eat than what God provided.
We all know the difference between a full and empty stomach. We are the same, the food is the same, but the mentality and the relationship between what we need and what we desire is different.
As we journey towards the High Holy Day season, what will set our appetite in the coming year? We must not wait until we are starving for Jewish knowledge, sacred connection, and peoplehood before we taste what we have missed.
Know that the manna, the gifts from God are in front of us. We just need to pick it up and taste it.
