Bread and Purpose
A Question “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.” Stop at this verse for a moment. What is the curse here? Is Hashem cursing man by making him work hard? But a person’s whole role in the world is work. Even before the first sin, the Torah says man was placed in the Garden “to work it and to guard it.” So is hard work itself a punishment? We have to look deeper. If the hard work is not the curse, then what is? The Closed Circle Listen, young married man. The curse is not in the sweat. The curse is in the bread, when the bread becomes the goal. There are two kinds of people. One works in order to live. The other lives in order to work. For the first, his work is a means to a purpose beyond it. The second falls into what we can call “a closed circle.” He works to survive, and he survives so he can go back to work. Work, bread, sleep, and again. And again. And again. All the strength of his inner self, all the “sweat,” is swallowed up by one single question: How do I survive? That is what the curse is about. It is not about the effort. It is about forgetting. He forgets a different question, a deeper one: What am I living for? Not an Old Story, but Your Life Now Don’t think this is an old story about the first man, who was sent out of the Garden of Eden. It is happening now. It is happening to you, sitting right here. In the morning you feel that a whole day of money worries is waiting for you. By evening you are too tired to think about anything else. That is the curse. It is not a punishment from history. It is a state of mind. It is the moment when bread has taken the place of purpose. The Torah says: “Man does not live by bread alone.” This means that bread is necessary, but it is not enough. The moment bread becomes everything, that word “alone” becomes a person’s whole identity. That is where the curse lives. The Repair: Serving Hashem Through Ordinary Life Here the Hasidic point comes in. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya (the classic book of Hasidic thought), explains that every Jew carries a hidden love for Hashem. This love is always reaching upward, always trying to come out into the open. The soul wants to live with purpose. It does not want to be swallowed up by bread. The repair is based on a foundation laid by the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement. The repair is not to run away from earning a living. Not at all. Running away is no solution, and that is not how a home for Hashem in this lower world is built. The repair is to make the means transparent, so that you can see the goal through it. Work hard for your living, and know what you are working for. For a Hasidic home. For charity. For raising and educating your children. So that you will have the strength and a calm, clear mind to serve Hashem. When this awareness is alive inside the sweat, the sweat itself becomes part of serving Hashem. He also writes in one of his letters that worry weighs down the inner self and darkens the light. This is not a call to stop caring. It is a freeing of the mind. A person trusts that Hashem is the One who provides, and not the sweat itself. That trust lets him work hard from inner calm instead of from fear. And from that inner calm, he can also ask the question “What for?”
Putting It into Practice
Once a day, stop and ask yourself one question: What for? It can be in the morning, at a meal, or before you go to sleep. What am I working for today? What is all this effort for? You may find an answer, even a small one: “So that my home will be a home of truth,” or “So that I can give charity for the Sabbath.” If you do, you have turned the curse into a blessing. The bread stays bread, but it is no longer everything. It has gone back to its place, as a means that serves a purpose. This is what it means to make a home for Hashem in this lower world. It is not up above, and it is not found by running away from the world. It is right here. Inside the sweat itself, inside the bread itself, is exactly where a person refines his share of the world and makes a home for Hashem.
Questions and answers
Q: If man was meant to work even before the sin, what is the curse in "By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread"?
Rabbi Landau answers: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread.” Stop at this verse for a moment. What is the curse here? Is Hashem cursing man by making him work hard? But a person’s whole role in the world is work. Even before the first sin, the Torah says man was placed in the Garden “to work it and to guard it.” So is hard work itself a punishment? We have to look deeper. If the hard work is not the curse, then what is?
Q: What is the "closed circle" of living in order to work?
Rabbi Landau answers: Listen, young married man. The curse is not in the sweat. The curse is in the bread, when the bread becomes the goal. There are two kinds of people. One works in order to live. The other lives in order to work. For the first, his work is a means to a purpose beyond it. The second falls into what we can call “a closed circle.” He works to survive, and he survives so he can go back to work. Work, bread, sleep, and again. And again. And again. All the strength of his inner self, all the “sweat,” is swallowed up by one single question: How do I survive? That is what the curse is about. It is not about the effort. It is about forgetting.
Q: How does the curse of bread as the goal show up in a young married man's life today?
Rabbi Landau answers: Don’t think this is an old story about the first man, who was sent out of the Garden of Eden. It is happening now. It is happening to you, sitting right here. In the morning you feel that a whole day of money worries is waiting for you. By evening you are too tired to think about anything else. That is the curse. It is not a punishment from history. It is a state of mind. It is the moment when bread has taken the place of purpose. The Torah says: “Man does not live by bread alone.” This means that bread is necessary, but it is not enough. The moment bread becomes everything, that word “alone” becomes a person’s whole identity. That is where the curse lives.
Q: How does the Tanya's idea of hidden love for Hashem relate to serving Hashem through ordinary work?
Rabbi Landau answers: Here the Hasidic point comes in. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya (the classic book of Hasidic thought), explains that every Jew carries a hidden love for Hashem. This love is always reaching upward, always trying to come out into the open. The soul wants to live with purpose. It does not want to be swallowed up by bread. The repair is based on a foundation laid by the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement. The repair is not to run away from earning a living. Not at all. Running away is no solution, and that is not how a home for Hashem in this lower world is built.
Q: What daily question does Rabbi Landau suggest asking to turn work from a curse into a blessing?
Rabbi Landau answers: Once a day, stop and ask yourself one question: What for? It can be in the morning, at a meal, or before you go to sleep. What am I working for today? What is all this effort for? You may find an answer, even a small one: “So that my home will be a home of truth,” or “So that I can give charity for the Sabbath.” If you do, you have turned the curse into a blessing. The bread stays bread, but it is no longer everything. It has gone back to its place, as a means that serves a purpose. This is what it means to make a home for Hashem in this lower world. It is not up above, and it is not found by running away from the world. It is right here.