GEN921 Where there is no flour [bread] there is no where there is no Torah, there is no flour [bread] Pirkei Avot III:21   … Some commentaries on Avoth see in this dictum a historical allusion. They read, “If it were not for flour there would be no Torah.” We have leant in our Oral Tradition that when Moses ascended to Heaven to receive the Torah, the angels protested, asserting that mere mortals were not fit to be entrusted with the resplendent Divine Word. The Midrash relates that they were ready to attack him, when the Almighty altered his appearance so that he looked like Abraham the Patriarch. And then the Almighty asked the angels: “Are you not ashamed to attack the one in whose house you ate and drank?” (See Genesis 18:2-8. In the Talmud and Midrash it is accepted without question that Abraham’s visitors were three angels (see Torah Shelemah, there)).   Turning to Moses, the Alight said, “On account of the merits of Abraham have you come into possession of the Torah!” Exodus Rabbah XXVIII,1  Moses could be thankful that Abraham the patriarch had given Sarah orders to “make ready quickly three measure of fine flour.” [this verse] Hence, “without the flour” of Abraham’s hospitality, there would have been no Torah: Moses would have failed to get it.  In the economic situation of the world, the condition of “no flour” – inadequate provisions – is always a relative one.   The sub-marginal conditions and diets of America might be considered “upper middle class” conditions in India. What one might consider, beyond question, “intolerable poverty,” another person, with a different set of values, might regard as a good living standard.   Now, a person who is thoroughly imbued with Torah will always be able to find a level of happiness, a sense of meaning, achievement, and esteem even in the most dire situation in the most precarious condition.   Therefore, our mishnah could mean: Because there is no Torah, there is a sense, a feeling, a conviction of “no bread.” Because a person has no allegiance to any higher values, but has rather sunk all his interest and regard into his natural possessions, he is constantly dissatisfied with his present conditions and complains of “no bread”: he remains dissatisfied and hungry He may go on thinking his hunger is for more ‘bread,” money, possessions, when it is actually a hunger for the spiritual verities of Torah.   A man came to Rabbi Israel Salanter and asked, “If someone has only ten minutes a day to study, to what branch of Torah should he devote himself in this short period: Bible, Mishnah or Talmud?” The Lithuanian Sage wisely answered, “Let him study mussar,” the system of personal soul-searching and moral chastisement to come nearer to the Holy One, “for then he will soon discover that he can spare more than ten minutes a day to study Torah.”   There is a similar lesson that we can learn from this mishnah: Study absorb its immutable values and profound truths, and you will soon discovery that “there is bread”: in the words of our Sages, “He who gives life will also give the sustenance for life.” (A Jewish folk-saying in the Aramaic of the Talmud, based on the Talmud’s aphorism, “When the Compassionate One grants abundance, it is to the living that He grants it” Talmud, Ta’anith 8b. It may also have been suggested by the Midrashic dictum, “The One who has created the day has created its sustenance” M’chilta, Vayyassa 2, etc.).  SINAI1 342-3