אם את כל דגי הים כו׳

The verse is Moshe’s reply when G‑d promised the people meat: “If all the fish of the sea be gathered for them…” (Numbers 11:22). The puzzle is why Moshe speaks of fish at all, when the people asked only for meat. The answer starts from Moshe’s earlier cry, “From where shall I have meat?”, which the Alter Rebbe reads as a statement about Moshe himself.

Read this way, “From where shall I have meat?” means that Moshe stood so high that he could not come down to draw his life-force from meat. Meat makes a person more corporeal, binding him more closely to the physical.

The Gemara rules that an unlearned person may not eat meat, while one who occupies himself with Torah may (Pesachim 49b); the text explains that a Torah scholar is able to elevate the meat he eats. For such a person, eating meat is an ascent for the meat, but at Moshe’s far higher level even this elevating would count as a descent.

Moshe’s earlier words (Numbers 11:21) are now read in the same light: the people number six hundred thousand, and Moshe is “in their midst.”

The weight falls on the word “I” (Anochi): Moshe’s own lofty level is present within the people. Since his level dwells among them, how could they be given meat, which would pull them down?

In its plain sense “umatza lahem” asks whether the animals will suffice them, but the Alter Rebbe reads it from the root “to find”: the flocks and herds would “find” the people and overtake them, as a pursuer catches the one he chases. Eating that meat would draw the people downward, and they would fall from the level of Moshe that is among them.

This is why Moshe went on to speak of fish. The Sages teach that whatever exists on dry land has a counterpart in the sea (Chullin 127a), so fish are the “meat” of the sea; but the sea, which covers what lives in it, belongs to the hidden world (alma de’iskasya), while dry land belongs to the revealed world (alma de’isgalya).

Eating the meat of dry land in order to elevate it is a great descent into the revealed world, and it carries the danger of falling into physicality instead of raising the meat up.

The way to make this descent safely is to go down first into the hidden world, represented by fish, and from there to descend further. This, the Alter Rebbe says, is the reason for the Jewish custom of eating fish before meat.

For Moshe, however, even fish would be too low: the words “umatza lahem” are said of the fish as well, meaning that even this hidden level would draw the people down below Moshe’s level.

The parenthesis explains why. Moshe is rooted in the supernal Adam (Man) of the World of Atzilus (Emanation), the one to whom it was said, “And rule over the fish of the sea” (Genesis 1:28); he therefore stands above even the lofty souls called “fish of the sea” (nunei yama) and “birds of the heavens.”

Since Moshe’s root is higher even than the spiritual “fish of the sea” in the higher worlds, eating physical fish or meat is a descent for him.

Bread, by contrast, is lower than meat in nature but higher in its root, as is shown elsewhere from the two loaves offered upon the two lambs, and from the fact that the full Grace after Meals is said only over bread. The manna, too, fell in Moshe’s merit (Taanit 9a) and is food of Chochmah (wisdom), and the reader is referred further to the discourse beginning “And I was beside Him as a nursling (amon)” (Proverbs 8:30).

Instead of the meat of cattle, G‑d swept in quail, which are birds and stand higher. The meat of cattle stems from the “face of the ox,” one of the four faces of the chayos, the holy beings of the Divine Chariot in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 1:10), whereas birds stem from the cherubim.

The quail were also very fat: the Gemara (Yoma 75b) describes a quail so rich that it was set upon thirteen loaves. Their fatness matters because red meat corresponds to Gevurah (restraint), and fat to Chesed (kindness).