There is a beautiful thought from one of the early midrashim Piskta D’Rav Kahana (12,3)
In Shir HaShirim, Shlomo Hamelech says, “I am lovesick.” Rav Kahana goes on to quote Rav Levi, who says that there was a prince that was in the hospital for six months. When he finally got out, the principal called up and said, “Time to go to school.”
The king answered, “My son is still sick. He is not ready to go to school. Let me take care of him for a few months and rehabilitate him, and then he will go back to school.”
So too, when the Jewish people left Mitzrayim, they weren’t ready to receive the Torah. They weren’t shining yet. They were working with bricks and mortar. They weren’t ready to go to school and receive the Torah. They needed 2-3 months of rehab. And their rehabilitation was the mann, the be’er /well, and the slav/quail.
After that, they’d be ready to receive the Torah.
This can be understood on a deeper level as well, based on a famous Chazal in Midrash Tanhuma that says, “The Torah was only given to be properly understood by the people that are the mann in the desert.
Why? What was so special about the mann, the be’er and the slav? They all symbolized that when a person relies on Hashem, his needs are taken care of. And only then can a person learn the Torah properly. The midrash continues and says that second to these people are the people that eat Teruma. These are the Kohanim that were given their tithes. When a person is able to rely on Hashem, he can learn without any worries. This is why Hashem said, “My children are not ready to go to school yet. They need a few months of rehab.”
And those few months of rehab were the months were we learned Bitachon, which prepared us to receive the Torah. Because without Bitachon a person really can’t properly learn Torah.
There is a famous Ben Ish Chai, in his Sefer Ben Yodaya, on Masechet Shabbat 31a ( Thank you Rabbi Ebstein) that answers Tosafot’s question, which is that there is seemingly a contradiction: It says that after 120 years, God ask us questions. One of them is, “Did you set aside time to learn?”
And another is, “Did you deal in business honestly?” There seems to be a contradiction about which is the first question and which is the second.
The Ben Ish Chai answers that the first main question really is, “Did you set aside time for learning?” That’s the the number one question, because without that, nothing follows. But if you are first asked whether you learned Torah, you might answer that you didn’t because you were too busy taking care of your expenses, that raising children costs money, so there was no time to learn. Therefore, the first question is Did you do business with Emuna? Did you believe that Hashem is the One that gives you parnasa, and that He is the one that is supervising all the money you get?
The man then answers, “Of course I believe! Of course I relied on Hashem!”
Now, when the next question is, “Did you set aside time to learn Torah?” he can’t say that he didn’t have time. Only seconds ago, he said that he said that he had Bitachon and that he relied on Hashem. So if that’s the case, how can he not find time to learn?
Bitachon goes hand-in-hand with the ability to commit oneself to learning Torah.
Every day, in the beracha that we say before Kiryat Shema, we say,”In the merit of our forefathers that relied on You.”
We see from here that that is the fundamental of Kabbalat HaTorah/accepting the Torah. As long as a person Is worried about his Parnasa, he can’t focus on learning. He doesn’t have the time, nor the head to learn, because he’s all worried. He does not have the clarity of mind and he cannot focus. The Chatam Sofer writes is his Derashot that the only person that is able to learn properly, without a mind full of worry is a person with bitachon.
So we need bitachon for the time to learn, and we need bitachon for the clarity of mind to learn.
As we get ready for the great holiday of Shavuot, we must re-commit ourselves to bitachon. That was the purpose of the days of the Omer; We have to prepare our bitachon, and get the rehab necessary to go to school.
That’s what happens on Shavuot.
We are going back to school.