Our Gemara on Amud aleph explains why there is a difference if one volunteered to bring a thanks offering and said: This animal is a thanks offering and this flour is designated for its loaves—and then, if the loaves were lost, he brings other loaves. Yet, if the thanks offering was lost, he does not bring another thanks offering, and the loaves are not sacrificed. Why? It is because the sacrifice is considered the main item, and the loaves are only adjunct. The loss of the loaves does not undermine the basic availability of the sacrifice; yet the reverse is not true.

The Gemara quips: “The loaves are brought on account of the thanks offering; but the thanks offering is not brought on account of the loaves.”

The Chozeh MiLublin (Zikaron Zos, Metzora) quoteds Rav Shmelke Minikolsberg, who read this line ethically: “We eat (loaves) in order to pray (thanksgiving), and we do not serve God in order to eat.” In other words, our intentions should be to eat in order to serve God, not the other way around. Kind of like the secular saying, “Do you eat to live, or do you live to eat?”

Mishna Avos (2:12) says that all of one’s intentions should be for the sake of heaven. Bartenura (ibid.) expands: “Even when eating, drinking, or engaging in relations, one’s intentions should be to stay healthy so as to serve God.”

Mishley (13:25) states: “The righteous person eats up to the point of his soul’s satisfaction, but the belly of the wicked is empty.”

The simple reading is that the righteous person is able to eat what he needs to maintain his life and well-being, while the wicked never feel satisfied. The Be’er Mayim Chaim (Bamidbar 15:18) adds a twist: since the righteous eat with pure intentions, they feed their soul as well, because it becomes the performance of a mitzvah.

Continuing the theme that we discussed in yesterday’s blogpost on Menachos 79 about the benefits of gratitude on psychological well-being, we can propose a similar idea. Why, in the end, are the righteous more satisfied and the wicked still hungry? It would be enough to say that the righteous are doing good deeds and therefore benefit from reward in the world to come. However, the verse indicates even a sense of satisfaction in this world.

Psychologically speaking, when one is focused on what they do not have, they tend to be more miserable. If their life is only about their own pleasures, it lacks meaning and the person is unable to contextualize the difficulties and challenges that are not only normal but, in a certain way, elevating and strengthening. However, when one sees his efforts as part of a larger picture—noble efforts to serve God, show gratitude, etc.—oftentimes they feel happy and satisfied.

In his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl (1946) asserted:

“Happiness…cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself” (pp. xiv–xv).