From the story of the mann, we see the great emunah and bitachon of Klal Yisroel. They trusted in Hashem to provide for them every day, as the pasuk says (Shemos 16:4) that Hashem tested them to see if they believed in Him or not by only sending enough mann for one day at a time.
It is related that when the Megaleh Amukos zy”a was serving as Rov of Krakow, he decided one day to leave the city. All of the residents’ pleas to stay did not help, and he was determined to leave.
When the day he planned on leaving was fast approaching, he suddenly announced that he had decided to stay. When his students asked him to explain what had changed, he said that a din Torah that had occurred the day before had changed his mind.
This was the story of the din Torah:
There was a very poor talmid chochom in Krakow who earned a meager living by selling bagels that he stayed up all night to bake. One day, a rich man noticed how this distinguished scholar was working to hard for a few dollars, and he thought to himself: This man should be sitting and learning undisturbed. He shouldn’t be standing in the marketplace, embarrassing himself by selling bagels.
He walked over to the talmid chochom and told him that he wanted to make a “Yissochor-Zevulun agreement” with him. He asked him how much money he earned a week, and the poor man answered that he made five silver coins. The rich man said, “I will give you six silver coins every week for you to sit and learn!”
Three months later, the rich man was walking through the marketplace when he saw the poor talmid chochom standing in the same spot and selling bagels, just like he used to do. He ran over to him and asked, “What’s this? Didn’t we have an agreement?”
The poor man replied, “I am backing out of the agreement!”
The wealthy man then said, “We have a signed agreement. You can’t just back out!”
The Megaleh Amukos related that these two men came to him for a din Torah. The rich man claimed that he had a signed Yissochor-Zevulun contract, and his partner was trying to renege on his agreement.
The poor man said, “It’s true that I signed on the deal, but I want to back out because I always baked my bagels at night, and I would daven to Hashem for the dough to come out good. Once the dough worked out, I would ask Hashem for the baking to go well and for the bagels to be tasty – not too hard and not too soft. Once the baking was done, I would daven to Hashem to send me customers. Once I was standing in the marketplace, when anyone passed by, I would daven that he should stop and decide that he wanted to buy a bagel. If someone bought one, I would thank Hashem for giving me some income. Through all of this, I felt very close to Him.
“Now that I am being given a salary every week without having to work, I feel that I am missing this connection with Hashem. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I went back to selling bagels.”
The Megaleh Amukos said that once he saw this, he decided that he could not leave a town when such great Yidden who love Hashem so much reside.
