02 Jan PARSHAS SHEMOS WORK, WORK, WORK

The Difference
Between ‘Melacha’
and ‘Avodah’
We are told that after
Moshe Rabbeinu
came to Pharoah and
asked him to free the Jews, Pharoah
reacted negatively. The King of Egypt
commanded the taskmasters to withhold
the straw necessary for making bricks,
and insisted that the slaves obtain straw
on their own.
If Pharoah’s goal was to make the
slaves work twice as hard, his decree
does not seem very wise. He should have
simply doubled the quota of bricks that
they were required to build each day.
Then he would have achieved the same
goal, that of forcing them to work twice
as hard, and he would have benefited at
the same time.
Pharoah had a project in progress. He
wanted store-cities built. Even if he
wanted to torture his workers, he should

have done so in a manner that would
have had the greatest payback. By
withholding the straw as a means of
turning the screws, Pharoah was
effectively shooting himself in the foot.
The truth is that Pharoah’s true goal
was to impose on the Jews “Avodas
Perech” — useless work. One of the
Medrashic interpretations of the term
“store-cities” (arei mis’kenos) is cities
that were built on quicksand. No sooner
were the cities built, than they would
begin to crumble and they would have to
be built all over again. Pharoah’s primary
interest was not a construction project;
he was primarily interested in breaking
the spirit of the people. The way to break
someone’s spirit is to make sure that he
feels absolutely no sense of
accomplishment for all of his efforts.
Nothing can be more depressing.
It is told that in one of the Soviet labor
camps there was a prisoner whose job
was to turn a wheel, which, he was told,
manually operated a flour mill. Day after

day, year after year, the prisoner
turned this wheel, which he
thought was at least grinding
flour. One day they took him
around and showed him that on
the other side of the wall, attached
to the wheel there was… nothing.
The prisoner was totally
devastated, because he saw that
all of his work for the last several
years had been totally in vain.
This is the meaning of “Avodas
Perech”. Work, work, work… for
nothing.
There is a difference in Lashon
HaKodesh [the holy tongue] between the
word Avodah and the word Melacha.
Melacha (which we find, for instance by
the forbidden Sabbath labors) connotes
constructive work. Avodah is merely
toil, without necessarily accomplishing
anything.
We as Jews need to concentrate on this
distinction, and ensure that our work is
Melacha, rather than Avodah. The
Talmud [Beizah 16a] remarks
“These foolish Babylonians eat
bread with bread.” The Baalei
Mussar (Masters of Ethics)
interpret this Gemara allegorically.
It does not mean that they sat down
at their meals and had a bread
sandwich, with a slice of rye
between two slices of whole wheat.
It means that they worked for their
bread, merely so that they could
obtain more bread. Bread was both
the means and the ends of their life.
They worked for a living and they
lived only to make a living.
If that is one’s life cycle — getting
up in the morning to work so that
he can eat so that the next morning
he can work again, etc. — that is
debilitating. That is not Melacha
(constructive labor), it is Avodas
Perech (vain toil). Life’s purpose
must be greater than making a
living.
A Jew can change that cycle. Yes,
we all need to a earn a living, but if
one makes constructive endeavors
part of that cycle — “I am making
a living so that I will be able to do
Mitzvos, learn Torah and help
others” — then the cycle will have
meaning. We elevate the process of
making a living to something

higher than a rat race.
Parenting can also appear to be a
meaningless cycle. When one cleans the
toys up in the morning only to find the
same toys scattered in the afternoon, and
then puts them away in the evening only
to find them scattered again in the
morning, when one changes the baby’s
diaper only to find the baby dirty again a
couple of hours later, it can feel, G-d
forbid, like Avodah rather than Melacha.
For children to develop and learn, and
for spirituality to flourish in a home, the
household first needs to function. When
people appreciate that their efforts are
vital to maintaining a functioning
household, then all the efforts which
seemed to be nothing more than
meaningless and repetitive work have a
much greater impact. Enabling a
household to function is certainly a
major accomplishment. It is not an
Avodah (vain effort); it is a Melacha
(constructive).
Rabbi Zev Leff offers the following
insight based on the Gematria
methodology of A”T BA”SH (whereby
the numeric value of words is calculated
from the relative position of each letter
from the end of the alphabet, rather than
the beginning. Instead of Aleph being 1
and Beis 2, Taf is 1 and Shin is 2, etc.).
Using this methodology, the word Perach
(in the phrase Avodas Perach) equals 39.
The implication is that the converse
(A”T BA”SH transformation) of the
term which depicts meaningless labor is
the number which represents constructive
labor (39 corresponds to the number of
categories of constructive activity
prohibited on the Sabbath).
We can make our endeavors, our work
and our labors constructive by giving
them a constructive purpose, and by
making proper use of our lives in the
time that G-d has allotted us in this
world.