By
Rabbi Jeffrey Wohlgelernter, Congregation
Adat Yeshurun, San Diego
This week's parsha deals with the beginnings of the
enslavement of the Jewish people. One of the ways that Pharaoh made the Jews'
life miserable was by making it impossible for them to spend any time focusing
on the redemption. He kept them so busy that they didn't have a minute to think.
When Moshe arrived on the scene and spoke a message of hope and redemption,
Pharaoh decreed that the Jews had to collect their own straw while maintaining
their previous quotas of bricks.
It is a bit curious, though. Why didnšt Pharaoh just increase the quota? In
this way he could have gotten the Jews to work harder and it would have been
more productive for him in the long run.
Truth be told, productivity and efficiency were not the driving forces behind
Pharaoh's actions. Rather, Pharaoh's whole and sole motivation was to destroy
the spirit of the Jews. By forcing them to collect their own straw, to build
precarious cities that were constantly being destroyed by
earthquakes, and to do demeaning labors, he was attempting to break the spirit
of the nation
Pharaoh was smarter than the average despot. He knew how to destroy the hope and
aspirations of an entire nation. Futility: Make them feel that they work for
naught and you extinguish any sense of hope, any sense of purpose.
The Maggid of
Dubno puts it so well in a beautiful parable. There was once a man who was
arrested by the government and placed in prison. He was placed in a cell that
contained a millstone, which had a pole in its center that ascended through the
ceiling and one coming out of its side so that it could be turned. The prisoner
was told that his sentence was to push this stone
around and around for 15 hours a day. When he asked why, he was told that he was
propelling a wheat mill in the room above that was going to provide for widows
and orphans.
As depressing as it was to be in prison, the bright spot was that he was doing
something purposeful with his time.
For 25 years, he arose every morning with an excitement to start the day, all
the while focusing on his holy task. At the end of his sentence he was released
from prison and as he was about to leave he asked his jailers if he could at
least see the mill he was operating before he exited the prison for freedom.
His jailers began to laugh. Mill? What mill? They took him upstairs and showed
him an empty room with a stick rising from the room below, attached to nothing.
He left prison a broken man. Life was futile. His purpose for existence was
stolen from him.
This is what Pharaoh was trying to accomplish. This is precisely why Pharaoh
failed. We have purpose far beyond the mundanities of bricks and straw. For when
our goal is to serve G-d, every moment is filled with purpose. Every act is
filled with meaning.
This is the difference between the two words for work that are used in the
Torah: melacha and avodah. Avodah is just plain work, tasks
we do to exist. Melacha, however, is the same work, but is invested with
meaning.
The Torah uses these two words in relation to Shabbos: Sheishes yamim
(for six days) ta'avod (you shall work) v'asitah kol milachtecha
(and you shall do all of your work), v'yom hashvi'i shabbos lahashem elokecha
(and the seventh day shall be a day of rest to the Lord your G-d).
What the Torah is telling us is that if we elevate our avodah, our
mundane work, to melacha, purposeful activities that have service of G-d
as their goal, then truly we will be able to see the seventh day as a day of
rest to HaShem.
When we see meaning in mundanities, we see meaning all around us. When we see
our lives as more that just vehicles for pleasure, but rather as vehicles to get
and receive meaning and purpose, then no one can wipe away our spirit. Our body
can be destroyed, but our spirit will endure forever. How lucky we are to have
purpose. How lucky we are to be blessed with 613
purposes.
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