“And there was a famine in the Land and Avram descended to Egypt because the famine was severe in the Land” [Bereishis 12:10]. Our Sages tell us that there were ten global famines in the history of mankind. The first was in the time of Adam. Pirkei D’Rebi Eliezer records a second famine in the days of Lemech. The famine that occurred in the beginning of Lech Lecha was already the third famine in the history of the world. The tenth and final famine will be that described by the Prophets in the days preceding the coming of the Messiah. “Behold days are coming, Hashem says, and I will send a famine to the land. But it will not be a famine of bread nor a thirst for water but for hearing the words of Hashem”. [Amos 8:11]
We are probably experiencing this famine in our time. People are thirsty to hear the word of Hashem.
Pirkei D’Rebi Eliezer notes that this will be the worst of all the famines. The Ponevicer Rav once asked: why is this considered such a terrible situation? Why does Pirkei D’Rebi Eliezer consider this to be the worst of all the ten famines? The Ponevicer Rav answered that when people are experiencing a famine and they are given a scrap of bread, it becomes a holiday for them. When people are dying of thirst and they receive a canteen of water, they become totally satisfied. “Wonderful! This is all that we need!” That is our problem in the famine of hearing the words of Hashem. As famished as we are, we are satisfied with too little! We are satisfied with scraps. We are happy with an occasional shiur here, and an occasional peek into a sefer [Jewish book] there. We quickly feel as if we have learned enough, we are no longer thirsty for the word of Hashem!
This is not good enough. As beautiful as things are today — with Daf Yomi [a program for studying the entire Talmud, one folio per day] and Dial-A-Daf [to hear a Rabbi teach the day’s folio by phone] and Torah more accessible than ever before, it appears to us to be so much and so plentiful, because we are famished. It seems so great as a result of the famine. But we cannot be satisfied. Torah is too vast and the day is too long to be satisfied with mere “scraps”. We have been starving for so long that we have forgotten what it is like to be full. Even a little crumb does the trick. That should not be enough. There should always be room for more.
