Avodah: Work and Worship
Avodah Work and Worship We are very familiar with the word ‘work’. We go to work. We work out in the yard. We have to do work in order to earn a pay check. Work is often viewed as a necessary evil. Thus, the extreme, concentrated effort toward preparing for retirement. That time when we don’t have to work any more. But we are less accustomed to the word ‘worship’. If we were to do a word association game I wonder what you would come up with. My guess is church, hymn singing, hands raised, angels….and if you are biblically-minded at all you might remember people in the Bible falling on their faces before angels, fire on the mountain or even the people in the New Testament who recognized Jesus as God. Can you imagine any two words that seem so different? And yet they have their origins in the same Hebrew word, Avodah . We are so far removed from the Hebrew culture that this concept is hardly recognizable. We are more likely to relate to t