You can know from the Torah that this is just a lie—and I hate lies, and I wish they would delete these midrashim that wrote this.

A hint: the children of Israel sometimes wanted meat… and they wanted water and they wanted watermelons, and if they didn’t have it they complained…
And if it was absorbed into the limbs, why would the Torah write that one must cover excrement?

Moshe,
Apparently you didn’t read the midrash in full. That same midrash (Sifrei), which expounds that the taste of the manna changed according to their desire, explicitly excludes five tastes to which the manna did not change: fish, watermelons, garlic, etc.

And your second question is not clear at all. “And you shall cover your excrement” is a commandment for future generations as well, even after entering the Land, and besides that, even in the wilderness they ate peace-offerings and sin-offerings, as commanded in the Torah.

Didn’t the manna come only after the complaints of the people of Israel about food?

B,
That doesn’t matter, because it was also during their stay in the wilderness; for 40 years they ate the manna.

R.M.,
Right, that only came back to my mind, this question, and even if I had read it then I would still argue that the midrash is unusual, because it explicitly says that the taste of the manna was like wafers in honey, whereas if everyone could just think of some other taste, then what was the point of cooking it or making cakes from it…? After all, the midrash doesn’t exempt the taste of cake from it, only watermelon, garlic, fish….

Do you think they offered peace-offerings and sin-offerings every day? Obviously not…

Right, but in the wilderness it says, “so that He not see in you any unseemly thing and turn away from you,” and therefore they were commanded to have a peg with their gear so they could relieve themselves outside the camp and cover it with earth. And when Miriam died there was no water for the people to drink—so if the manna was absorbed into their limbs, why did they need water? They could have thought of the manna as water and that’s it. Does the midrash exempt water too?
Just for the sake of the point: if I were thinking about pork, would the manna give me the taste of pork?

Moshe,
Cake has no taste. Cake is a form of serving. It could be that they wanted the food to look like a cake and not like manna.

Not correct. The phrase “that He not see in you any unseemly thing” is in the Book of Deuteronomy, which is Moses’ speech before entering the Land of Israel.

(About the pork, as an anecdote: the Rogatchover, in his responsa (Dvinsk), in one of the first sections discusses whether it was permitted to experience the taste of pork in the manna.)

Moshe,
Cooking is not for the taste but for the texture, hardness, and shape (if it was like coriander seed, then maybe it was hard. Like in the expression “hard as sinews.” “Sinews” in Hebrew is similar to the word used there).

Who said they didn’t offer a sin-offering every day? There were enough people there to provide accidental sins, and a Nazirite offering and a woman’s post-birth offering every day. But even if not, why does that matter? If they offered one once a week, should the Torah not address it? Besides, as was already said, this is a commandment for future generations in preparation for entering the Land, as they answered you.

Manna does not provide the necessary liquid intake. That is obvious; that is why several times they had to find water or bring water from the rock.

As for the taste of pork: maybe. You ask as though I was there and can answer you. The midrash, as far as I know, does not exclude that taste, but it may be that the exclusion was obvious to it on its own.

With God’s help, 5 Av 5778

The fact that the manna had a variety of tastes already emerges from the plain meaning of the verses, for in the portion of Beshalach it says of the manna, “and its taste was like wafers in honey,” while in the portion of Beha'alotekha it says: “The people went about and gathered it, and ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar, and boiled it in a pot and made cakes of it; and its taste was like the taste of rich oil.” Rashbam and Ibn Ezra explained that the natural taste of the manna was “like wafers in honey,” but after processing it, its taste was “like the taste of rich oil.”

Even the words of Rabbi Shimon in the Sifrei (Beha'alotekha 87), that “the manna would change for them into anything they wanted,” can be explained to mean that through the different methods of processing—grinding, pounding, boiling, and baking—it was possible to arrive at whatever taste they wanted. On the one hand, there was a miracle here, since there were no spices or flavoring agents in the wilderness, and on the other hand, some basic effort of processing the raw manna was needed in order to obtain the desired taste.

However, in the anonymous layer of the Sifrei (Beha'alotekha 89), it says that they did not need to grind, pound, bake, or boil; rather, by desire alone the result was achieved as though they had ground, pounded, boiled, and baked. And since “an anonymous Sifrei is Rabbi Shimon,” perhaps Rabbi Shimon is following his own view that when Israel does the will of the Omnipresent, they do not need effort.

The Hizkuni brings: “It is found in aggadic literature: ‘The people went about and gathered’—these are the righteous, who ate it as it came down; ‘and ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar’—these are the intermediate people; ‘and boiled it in a pot’—these are the wicked, who had to cook it.” According to this midrash, the higher a person’s spiritual level, the less effort he needed. One who did not merit it had to toil in processing the manna in order to get a good taste from it, while one who did merit it attained the taste by thought alone.

Regards, S.Z. Levinger

As for “and you shall have a peg among your gear,” Rabbi Shimon was also asked, and he answered: “What the merchants of the nations of the world brought them—came out of them; but the manna never came out of them… Another interpretation: after they became corrupt, they did excrete it.” Even according to this other interpretation, sin caused a decline in the miraculous quality of the manna.

In paragraph 3, line 2:
… And since “an anonymous Sifrei is Rabbi Shimon,” perhaps Rabbi Shimon is following his own view…

And regarding “cakes” —
Unlike the “cake” of modern Hebrew, which is filled with or kneaded with sweets, the “cakes” in the Bible are “wafers,” round circles of bread, like “unleavened cakes.” (“Tzefichit” too is, according to Da'at Mikra, a “thin wafer,” based on similar words in Arabic.)

“And unleavened bread, and unleavened loaves mingled with oil, and unleavened wafers spread with oil; of fine wheat flour shall you make them.”

“And they baked the dough which they had brought out of Egypt into unleavened cakes, for it was not leavened; because they were driven out of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves.”

I understood that a cake means wafers, and in a round shape.
Please explain what “unleavened bread” is, and what “unleavened loaves” are.

To: S.Z. Levinger,
Let’s say that if the manna did not come out of them, then if every person eats an omer every day, his weight would keep going up and up and up… does that sound logical?

And regarding its taste, there is no doubt that its texture and processing and the way it is cooked changes the taste—you don’t need to prove that; we know it from life. And what you are basically saying is that the Torah is writing things that are obvious to us from the outset, so what is it actually teaching? Especially if we insist that the manna changed its taste according to the desire of the one eating it. Even though the Torah defined distinct tastes regardless of the thought of the person eating it. Therefore it is not acceptable that the manna changed its taste according to the thought of the person eating it, but rather according to methods of cooking and processing the manna and so on… and then someone comes and says that the cakes made from the manna were round—and why should we care about the shape at all? We and the Torah are talking about the taste.

By the way, what is “the rich oil”?
And if the manna had a natural taste before and after cooking, how can we say that the taste changes according to thought? That is not natural. Because the whole point is that the manna has no taste at all, and then the taste changes according to thought—and then it’s a miracle—even without cooking and baking and processing and so on.

But even according to the plain meaning of the verses, that they had to grind, pound, boil, or bake, are we not still speaking of a miracle? By the laws of nature, can grinding, boiling, and baking without spices, when the raw materials are only manna and water, change a honey taste into an oil taste?

It is clear that even in the plain meaning, the change of taste through the processing actions was a miraculous process, except that symbolic effort was required for the miracle to operate; and about that the midrash says that the righteous did not need even that symbolic effort, but achieved the change of taste by thought alone.

And similarly regarding your question of where the matter in the manna went—do we, by nature, know of a substance that rots after one day but on the Sabbath lasts for two days? Do we know of a substance of which any amount turns into one omer when you bring it home?

In principle there is no place for questions of natural plausibility in a miraculous reality. Maybe the manna returned from “something” to “nothing”? Maybe it changed from matter to energy? Or maybe it melted in body heat (which is greater than “when the sun grew hot”) and became liquid? The logic behind a miracle is not natural logic but spiritual logic, and that means that what comes down from heaven has no waste!

Regards, S.Z. Levinger.