The Secret of Samson's Riddle: Surrender is an Infinite Process. Women's Naso 5786 Class

Summary

Rabbi YY Jacobson uses Samson’s riddle in Judges as a starting point for a teaching about spiritual growth, mindful eating, and the ongoing need to surrender old identities.

Samson’s Story and the Riddle

• Parshas Naso discusses the nazir—a man or woman who undertakes a special form of holiness, including abstaining from wine, not cutting their hair, and avoiding contact with the dead. Samson is presented as a nazir from birth, destined to begin freeing the Israelites from the Philistines.
• Samson insists on marrying a Philistine woman from Timnah. On the way there, he kills a lion and keeps the incident secret.
• When he returns later for the wedding, he finds a swarm of bees and honey in the lion’s remains. He eats some and shares it with his parents without telling them where it came from.
• At the wedding feast, Samson challenges thirty Philistine guests to solve his riddle: “Out of the eater came something to eat, and out of the strong came something sweet.” If they solve it, he will give them clothing; if not, they owe him clothing.
• Unable to solve it, the guests threaten Samson’s bride and pressure her to get the answer. She persuades Samson to tell her, then passes the answer to them. They respond: “What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?”
• Samson recognizes that they obtained the answer through his wife, saying they would not have solved his riddle if they had not “plowed with” his heifer. He then obtains the promised clothing by killing thirty Philistines in Ashkelon.

The lecturer notes that the riddle seems impossible if treated as a private fact: the guests could not know about the lion or the bees. He presents the Malbim’s interpretation that the riddle also expresses a general idea, not merely an obscure event.

From Food to Spiritual Energy

• In the Malbim’s reading, the bee offers a striking image: it takes in nectar but produces honey as food, rather than simply absorbing the nectar into its own body. Thus, in a special sense, food comes from the eater.
• Rabbi Jacobson then develops a teaching from the Alter Rebbe’s Likutei Torah: food is more than physical matter. In this spiritual framework, it carries energy that descends through successive levels from its Divine source and takes physical form.
• Eating can complete the journey in the other direction. A person who eats with awareness and purpose can recognize the food’s spiritual dimension and direct its energy toward serving God. In this sense, eating can be an act of birur—clarifying or elevating the spiritual potential within something.
• The lecture connects this idea to the broader food web: living things depend on one another, and human beings have a distinctive capacity to act with conscious intention and bring what they receive into purposeful service.

Eating with Awareness

The lecture presents eating as a spiritual practice rather than a merely automatic or emotional act:

• Pause and notice what you are eating. Don’t treat food as an anonymous object or as a way to numb stress or anxiety.
• Recognize its journey and energy. A piece of food did not simply appear; it represents a chain of life and effort and, in the lecture’s spiritual account, ultimately derives from Divine energy.
• Say the blessing with awareness. A blessing can help a person acknowledge that food is part of a larger reality, not something isolated from its source.
• Ask what you are bringing to the exchange. Food gives nourishment, but the eater can also give it purpose by using its energy for meaningful action and service.
• Stay present to your role. The lecture compares this responsibility to that of a teacher or leader: receiving something without knowing why or how to use it misses the opportunity to guide it toward a higher purpose.

The Deeper Meaning: The Eater Can Become Food

The lecture’s central interpretation of Samson’s riddle goes beyond eating. It turns the image around: the one who has been elevating others may eventually need to be elevated in turn.

• A person may grow, help others, and successfully work through challenges. Yet that progress is not necessarily a final state.
• New circumstances can unsettle what once felt secure. The lecturer interprets this not necessarily as the erasure of past growth, but as an invitation to a deeper level of transformation.
• The “eater” who once elevated what they encountered can become “food”—something whose former form must be surrendered so it can be transformed into a higher form.
• This process requires bittul b’metzius—a deep surrender of one’s existing form or self-conception. Yesterday’s achievement, insight, or spiritual identity may need to be relinquished as the person begins again at a new level.
• The point is to avoid becoming attached to spiritual status or to the belief that one has “finished” growing. Even a sense of having mastered one’s ego can become another form of ego.
• The lecture relates Samson’s name to shemesh, “sun,” and uses the image to describe a movement from mediated or shielded spiritual awareness toward a more direct openness to Divine light. That movement requires releasing the protective assumptions and identities that once helped a person grow.

The lion-to-honey image becomes a metaphor for transformation: something powerful or frightening may, through a process of change, yield sweetness. The lecturer does not claim that every painful experience is easy to understand; rather, he presents the story as an invitation to view disruption as a possible opening to further growth.

Speakers and Sources Featured

Speakers

• Rabbi YY Jacobson — the lecturer and primary speaker.
• Unnamed audience members — briefly ask a question about the meaning of “sublimate” and make a comment during the discussion.
• Yeshiva.net closing announcement — an unidentified voice gives the closing donation appeal.

Sources and Figures Cited

• Tanakh: Parshas Naso; the story of Samson in Judges (Shoftim), especially chapters 13–14; Psalms, in connection with the sun and shield imagery.
• The Malbim — cited for interpreting Samson’s riddle as a conceptual idea involving the bee and honey.
• The Alter Rebbe (Baal HaTanya), Likutei Torah — the main source for the teaching about food, spiritual energy, elevation, and surrender.
• Midrash — cited regarding the spiritual nourishment of angels and the interpretation of Samson’s riddle.
• Gemara/Talmud — cited regarding why bee honey is permitted and in connection with Samson’s name and the sun-and-shield imagery.
• Rabbi Avigdor Miller — cited for an observation about the body’s digestive processes.
• The Baal Shem Tov — featured in a story illustrating how a person can become absorbed in food rather than consciously elevating it.
• The Rebbe Rashab — featured in a story illustrating eating with spiritual presence.
• The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe — featured in a story about a cup of tea and the idea of surrender.
• The Kotzker Rebbe — featured in a story about returning to the basics of Aleph-Beis and remaining open to truth.
• Reb Meir Premishlan — cited for a teaching expressing deep sensitivity toward eating meat.