Rabbi Elazar ban Azarya says: “If there is no Torah, there is no derekh eretz; if there is no derekh eretz there is no Torah. If there is no wisdom, there is no awe; if there is no awe, there is no wisdom. If there is no knowledge, there is no understanding; if there is no understanding, there is no knowledge. If there is no flour, there is no Torah; if there is no Torah, there is no flour.” (Pirkei Avot, chapter 3)
The last part of this aphorism is the best known. In Hebrew it reads: Im en kemach en tora; im en tora en kemach. “Kemach” means more than just “flour”; it connotes all food, and even more generally all worldly needs. This is a place to explore the interactions between Torah and kemach, and all the ripples that those interactions send out into the world at large.
