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 didn¹t 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.