This week, in the portion of Sh?mot, we start reading about the slavery in Egypt. After Yosef and his entire generation had died, the Egyptians decided to start using the Jews for their own benefit. Thy "embittered their lives with hard work, with mortar and bricks and all the labor of the field. All the work was crushing." The Talmud explains that it started with mortar and bricks and eventually it ended up being also work in the field and ?all the work.? The ?beginning? can also be understood as ?most important?. In that way, it would mean that the mortar and bricks is the collective name for slavery, and all the other types of work are details. From what we read in the Torah, we understand that the main work was always in connection with bricks.
The midrash tells us how it all started. One day, the Pharaoh himself went down to the workplace and started baking bricks, asking the Jews to help him out. The Jews worked that day with all their might. At day?s end, Pharaoh instructed the supervisors to count the bricks that were produced, and set the total as daily requirement to be produced in the future. Since that first day, everyone worked to the best of their capacity. We know that even when - at a later stage - the Jews were forced to do different types of slave labor, they were still mainly occupied with the baking of bricks. It simply took up all their time.
When, after several hundred years of slavery, Moshe is finally sent to redeem the Jews, Pharaoh at first refuses and comes out with a new harsh decree. Up until then, the slaves had only worked in baking the bricks from the materials that were brought to them by others. From then on, the Jews had to collect the material themselves and still find a way to produce the same amount of bricks. What was the obsession with bricks all about?
The builders of the tower of Bavel were punished so severely, because they were building a city and a tower in order not to have to build the real city and tower. The world itself was created by ten utterances. Words are channels through which spiritual energy flows to sustain the world. Every letter is compared to a brick. A few letters-bricks makes a word-house. A few words-houses together makes a city. Similarly, every mitzvah or every deed done for the sake of Heaven, builds another brick in Hashem?s house in this world.
The Egyptians wanted the Jewish workers to bake the bricks for their buildings in order to receive the spiritual powers that came with them, in an easy way. This explains why all the work that was being done in Egypt can be considered to fall into the category of brick baking. Every deed builds another brick. A good deed is another brick on the positive side and an evil deed is a brick on the opposite side.
Furthermore, there are two types of stones one can build with. There is natural stone, and there are man-made bricks. Natural stone is ?heaven-made? and symbolizes the positive side. The Torah tells us that the Babylonians who built the tower were forced to bake the bricks themselves, because they lived in a valley. Natural stone comes from the mountains. Mountains are high, symbolizing their closeness to G-d. A valley is low and deep and shows a lack of G-dliness. The Holy Temple, in contrast, had to be built from natural stone. The reason for that is because it symbolizes holiness. Man-made bricks are not necessarily a symbol of negativity. They are only potentially negative, such as in the Talmud reference to a form of idol worship that involved a brick.
This may be the explanation why the Jewish people were constantly asked to build using bricks. Since they were building buildings for Pharaoh, who is a symbol of the negative powers, they were using bricks instead of natural stone, which is what is used for building Hashem?s house, the Temple. According to the above explanation, however, it should have been the other way round. We explained that the Egyptians were trying to suck from the great spiritual energy that the positive side possesses. It would therefore make more sense if they had asked the Jews to use natural stone, the positive side, to build for them, the negative side. That would connect them with the energies of holiness contained in the heaven-made stones.
Why did Hashem create the world? Because He desired to have a dwelling in the lowest realms. Based on this, we can say that there is an advantage in bricks over natural stone. Since bricks refer to impure forces, using them to build a dwelling for Hashem would be a greater accomplishment than using only natural stones. The Egyptians wanted to have this potential advantage used for their impure forces.
This still leaves us with the question as to why the Egyptians insisted that the Jews bake the bricks themselves.
Why would Hashem want a dwelling in the physical realm?
1) It shows His greatness. The greater one is, the lower he can reach.
For example, in the case of the attribute of kindness. It takes the very rich to invite the very poor. Who can we use as a better example of this than our forefather Avraham, who was the embodiment of chesed, kindness. He was known to run after Arab travelers to invite them into his house. These travelers were people who used to bow down to the dirt on their feet. The lowest of the low. Still, Avraham used to run after them to extend his kindness to them.
2) It shows the truth of G-dliness.
Truth always has to be true, from beginning to the end. If anywhere in the middle truth is false, it is no longer truth. If spirituality would only be able to exist in higher worlds, it wouldn?t be a complete reality. Only by being recognized in our physical world, G-dliness proves that it is real. This recognition that the lower realms are being sustained by a spiritual force is, in a way, more powerful than the fact that they are being sustained. To go back to our example of Avraham. When Avraham wasn?t feeling well after his circumcision, Hashem made it very hot, so that there wouldn?t be any travelers, in order not to strain Avaham, who would certainly want to invite and personally serve them. This caused Avraham great pain. He had such a desire to always bestow kindness on others, that lack of guests caused him to be upset. In other words, Avraham needed needy people for his own benefit. Still, the satisfaction he would have when feeding a hungry person was mainly from the smile on the face of the receiver of his kindness. Even though it also fulfilled a personal need, the pleasure would not be from having found an outlet for his overflowing desire to be kind, but rather the pleasure that the kindness was received.
Ever since the creation of the world, we have been working on achieving its purpose, namely to make a dwelling for Hashem. This has been happening gradually in different stages. One major station in this process was the construction of the tabernacle in the desert, which was the first physical structure to ?house? Hashem?s presence. The roof of the tabernacle consisted f several layers. The top layers were made from animal skin. The lowest layer was a mixture of wool and flax. The walls were made out of wooden beams. The desert sand served as natural floor. What we see here is that the mishkan was build from ?top to bottom?. The top was made out of items from the animal kingdom, the walls were made out of growing things - plants - and the floor was inanimate matter. As we look down, we see a decrease in life force. The tabernacle only expressed the first point we previously mentioned. G-d?s presence shone very brightly from above and even reached the lowest level, the desert sand. Yet, the lower it reached, the less of it was being felt, hence the decrease in life force.
The Temple that was built later in the Jewish Land was primarily made out of stone (inanimate). From the floor to the roof, stones were being used. The wooden beams were only there to add some strength to the structure. At that point, G-dliness had permeated much lower levels of the world, to the extent that even the inanimate stones ?felt? and recognized G-dliness and were able to house Hashem?s presence. There the second point came to expression. Not only was G-d?s presence reaching the lowest levels, those levels also felt and recognized it.
All this, however, doesn?t fulfill Hashem?s desire to have a dwelling. A desire, a sudden craving, is an unexplainable phenomenon. One can want ice cream for its good taste and a sandwich to fill an empty stomach, but a craving for gefilte fish on Tuesday afternoon has no reason. It is just a desire. The ultimate dwelling of Hashem is beyond reason. This will only be fully accomplished after Moshiach comes.
By building a physical edifice for Him, we reveal the divine energy within the inanimate, which was there all the time. All we do is bring it out into the open. There is still one place where G-dliness does not reach by ?nature?. Hashem created a system wherein there is room for evil that can openly oppose Him. It is up to us to transform that and make it into good.
That is the process of baking bricks. When the idea to build the tower of Bavel first came up, the Babylonians sad to themselves, "Let us bake bricks so that the bricks will be like stones." By baking the brick in a hot oven it becomes just as strong as natural stone. It gets a new status. From raw, weak material, it becomes a new item - a strong brick.
When we are told to make a dwelling for Hashem, we have to do several things. There is one way of building a Temple - out of natural stone. By doing so, we reveal the hidden potential that was always there. The harder work is to ?bake bricks? by fighting evil and breaking down its entire existence until it becomes transformed into a new, good, positive part of the world.
This explains why the Egyptians not only wanted the Jews to build buildings with pre-fabricated bricks, but also wanted them to be baked by the Jews. It is this power, that only a Jew has, to transform evil into good, that they wanted to use for their pleasure.
May all the bricks and stones we collected and baked since the creation of the world be enough to build the third Temple in Yerushalayim with the coming of Moshiach - Now!
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Asher ben Shimon writes commentary for www.TorahThoughts.tk.
The midrash tells us how it all started. One day, the Pharaoh himself went down to the workplace and started baking bricks, asking the Jews to help him out. The Jews worked that day with all their might. At day?s end, Pharaoh instructed the supervisors to count the bricks that were produced, and set the total as daily requirement to be produced in the future. Since that first day, everyone worked to the best of their capacity. We know that even when - at a later stage - the Jews were forced to do different types of slave labor, they were still mainly occupied with the baking of bricks. It simply took up all their time.
When, after several hundred years of slavery, Moshe is finally sent to redeem the Jews, Pharaoh at first refuses and comes out with a new harsh decree. Up until then, the slaves had only worked in baking the bricks from the materials that were brought to them by others. From then on, the Jews had to collect the material themselves and still find a way to produce the same amount of bricks. What was the obsession with bricks all about?
The builders of the tower of Bavel were punished so severely, because they were building a city and a tower in order not to have to build the real city and tower. The world itself was created by ten utterances. Words are channels through which spiritual energy flows to sustain the world. Every letter is compared to a brick. A few letters-bricks makes a word-house. A few words-houses together makes a city. Similarly, every mitzvah or every deed done for the sake of Heaven, builds another brick in Hashem?s house in this world.
The Egyptians wanted the Jewish workers to bake the bricks for their buildings in order to receive the spiritual powers that came with them, in an easy way. This explains why all the work that was being done in Egypt can be considered to fall into the category of brick baking. Every deed builds another brick. A good deed is another brick on the positive side and an evil deed is a brick on the opposite side.
Furthermore, there are two types of stones one can build with. There is natural stone, and there are man-made bricks. Natural stone is ?heaven-made? and symbolizes the positive side. The Torah tells us that the Babylonians who built the tower were forced to bake the bricks themselves, because they lived in a valley. Natural stone comes from the mountains. Mountains are high, symbolizing their closeness to G-d. A valley is low and deep and shows a lack of G-dliness. The Holy Temple, in contrast, had to be built from natural stone. The reason for that is because it symbolizes holiness. Man-made bricks are not necessarily a symbol of negativity. They are only potentially negative, such as in the Talmud reference to a form of idol worship that involved a brick.
This may be the explanation why the Jewish people were constantly asked to build using bricks. Since they were building buildings for Pharaoh, who is a symbol of the negative powers, they were using bricks instead of natural stone, which is what is used for building Hashem?s house, the Temple. According to the above explanation, however, it should have been the other way round. We explained that the Egyptians were trying to suck from the great spiritual energy that the positive side possesses. It would therefore make more sense if they had asked the Jews to use natural stone, the positive side, to build for them, the negative side. That would connect them with the energies of holiness contained in the heaven-made stones.
Why did Hashem create the world? Because He desired to have a dwelling in the lowest realms. Based on this, we can say that there is an advantage in bricks over natural stone. Since bricks refer to impure forces, using them to build a dwelling for Hashem would be a greater accomplishment than using only natural stones. The Egyptians wanted to have this potential advantage used for their impure forces.
This still leaves us with the question as to why the Egyptians insisted that the Jews bake the bricks themselves.
Why would Hashem want a dwelling in the physical realm?
1) It shows His greatness. The greater one is, the lower he can reach.
For example, in the case of the attribute of kindness. It takes the very rich to invite the very poor. Who can we use as a better example of this than our forefather Avraham, who was the embodiment of chesed, kindness. He was known to run after Arab travelers to invite them into his house. These travelers were people who used to bow down to the dirt on their feet. The lowest of the low. Still, Avraham used to run after them to extend his kindness to them.
2) It shows the truth of G-dliness.
Truth always has to be true, from beginning to the end. If anywhere in the middle truth is false, it is no longer truth. If spirituality would only be able to exist in higher worlds, it wouldn?t be a complete reality. Only by being recognized in our physical world, G-dliness proves that it is real. This recognition that the lower realms are being sustained by a spiritual force is, in a way, more powerful than the fact that they are being sustained. To go back to our example of Avraham. When Avraham wasn?t feeling well after his circumcision, Hashem made it very hot, so that there wouldn?t be any travelers, in order not to strain Avaham, who would certainly want to invite and personally serve them. This caused Avraham great pain. He had such a desire to always bestow kindness on others, that lack of guests caused him to be upset. In other words, Avraham needed needy people for his own benefit. Still, the satisfaction he would have when feeding a hungry person was mainly from the smile on the face of the receiver of his kindness. Even though it also fulfilled a personal need, the pleasure would not be from having found an outlet for his overflowing desire to be kind, but rather the pleasure that the kindness was received.
Ever since the creation of the world, we have been working on achieving its purpose, namely to make a dwelling for Hashem. This has been happening gradually in different stages. One major station in this process was the construction of the tabernacle in the desert, which was the first physical structure to ?house? Hashem?s presence. The roof of the tabernacle consisted f several layers. The top layers were made from animal skin. The lowest layer was a mixture of wool and flax. The walls were made out of wooden beams. The desert sand served as natural floor. What we see here is that the mishkan was build from ?top to bottom?. The top was made out of items from the animal kingdom, the walls were made out of growing things - plants - and the floor was inanimate matter. As we look down, we see a decrease in life force. The tabernacle only expressed the first point we previously mentioned. G-d?s presence shone very brightly from above and even reached the lowest level, the desert sand. Yet, the lower it reached, the less of it was being felt, hence the decrease in life force.
The Temple that was built later in the Jewish Land was primarily made out of stone (inanimate). From the floor to the roof, stones were being used. The wooden beams were only there to add some strength to the structure. At that point, G-dliness had permeated much lower levels of the world, to the extent that even the inanimate stones ?felt? and recognized G-dliness and were able to house Hashem?s presence. There the second point came to expression. Not only was G-d?s presence reaching the lowest levels, those levels also felt and recognized it.
All this, however, doesn?t fulfill Hashem?s desire to have a dwelling. A desire, a sudden craving, is an unexplainable phenomenon. One can want ice cream for its good taste and a sandwich to fill an empty stomach, but a craving for gefilte fish on Tuesday afternoon has no reason. It is just a desire. The ultimate dwelling of Hashem is beyond reason. This will only be fully accomplished after Moshiach comes.
By building a physical edifice for Him, we reveal the divine energy within the inanimate, which was there all the time. All we do is bring it out into the open. There is still one place where G-dliness does not reach by ?nature?. Hashem created a system wherein there is room for evil that can openly oppose Him. It is up to us to transform that and make it into good.
That is the process of baking bricks. When the idea to build the tower of Bavel first came up, the Babylonians sad to themselves, "Let us bake bricks so that the bricks will be like stones." By baking the brick in a hot oven it becomes just as strong as natural stone. It gets a new status. From raw, weak material, it becomes a new item - a strong brick.
When we are told to make a dwelling for Hashem, we have to do several things. There is one way of building a Temple - out of natural stone. By doing so, we reveal the hidden potential that was always there. The harder work is to ?bake bricks? by fighting evil and breaking down its entire existence until it becomes transformed into a new, good, positive part of the world.
This explains why the Egyptians not only wanted the Jews to build buildings with pre-fabricated bricks, but also wanted them to be baked by the Jews. It is this power, that only a Jew has, to transform evil into good, that they wanted to use for their pleasure.
May all the bricks and stones we collected and baked since the creation of the world be enough to build the third Temple in Yerushalayim with the coming of Moshiach - Now!
--------------------------------------------------------
Asher ben Shimon writes commentary for www.TorahThoughts.tk.