This week’s Torah portion brings the book of Exodus to a close. On the surface, these past weeks told the story of our Exodus from Egypt (Mitzrayim) and our experience at Sinai; yet at a deeper level, the text speaks of a spiritual journey of awakening. The word Mitzrayim can also be understood as meaning “narrow places” (of consciousness). Mitzrayim represents the self-centered contracted awareness. Conversely, Sinai symbolizes the inner space of freedom, of expanded awareness where we are able to experience Revelation and meet God. The inner journey from one to the other is one of dis-identification from our enslaving conditioned mind, from our ego; and of awakening to the One that is All. But how can we, today, retrace the steps of our ancestors in order to glean such an expanded awareness?

Our Torah portion begins:

These are the accountings of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of Testimony that were accounted by Moses for the labor of the Levites, under Itamar, son of Aharon the priest. [Exod. 38:21]

What we are called to do, in the concluding verses of Exodus, is to build a Tabernacle; a sanctuary wherein we will be able to worship our newly revealed God. We have journeyed from a place of slavery under the whip of Pharaoh in Egypt, to “labor” toward creating a place of worship under the thundercloud of God at Sinai. Interestingly, the word for “slavery” in Hebrew shares the same root as the word for “labor” and the word for “worship;” respectively: av’dut,avodah, and avodah again. There is a fourth word sharing this same root; the word for “service” (also avodah). So what is the Hebrew hinting at here?

First and foremost, if a language conveys the deepest values of a people, then we can see that, since biblical times, the Hebrews considered Avodah/service to be mankind’s ultimate purpose.  As far as Judaism is concerned, to serve is our primary reason for being; not the pursuit of happiness. And so our journey fromav’dut to avodah, from slavery to Divine Work can be seen as a journey of expanding service. It begins with the awareness that we are stuck in serving (or even worshiping) the every whim of our ego, unconsciously acting out the trappings of our conditioned mind. It continues with shifting the object of our service from self to other, to all others, to planet, and ultimately to God or Life. In transforming the work/labor that is our life to becoming one of service we are able to dis-identify with the constricted ego-personality and sense into God’s Presence not only in the other’s eyes but in the world that envelops us.

Torah’s subtle injunction might be: be of service to your loved ones, your neighbors, your co-workers. Be of service to your community and beyond your community. Serve to bring peace, and understanding between nations and religions. Serve to heal the ecosystem both locally and globally. Become the peaceful steward of the earth. Why? Because the path of service — from av’dutto avodah — is one of the paths that lead from Egypt to Sinai, enabling us to evolve from ego-consciousness to  God-consciousness; and from this place, to know the world to be an all-embracing sacred Tabernacle.