A vort from the Rebbe on this week's parshah, Parshas Shemos. In the pasuk it says in Parshas Shemos, \"וימררו את חייהם בעבודה קשה\", that the Mitzrayim, the Egyptians, made the life of the Yidden bitter with hard work, hard labor, \"בחומר ובלבנים\", with cement and with bricks, \"ובכל עבודה בשדה\", and all kinds of work in the field, \"את כל עבודתם אשר עבדו בהם בפרך\", and all avodah, all work that they made them do, hard labor. So, the obvious kashya here is, if they made them work all kinds of work, why does the Torah specify specifically חומר ובלבנים, which is cement and making bricks, which is the concept, the material for building, why does the Torah mention that separately? And the Gemara takeh answers that, that it started off בחומר ובלבנים, it started off by making them work with cement and with bricks, ולבסוף בכל עבודה בשדה, later on it went into working all kinds of work in the field, ולבסוף את כל עבודתם, and then later made even all kinds of different work, too. But the Rebbe explains that everything is everything is meduyak, everything is exact. So when the pasuk says that they made them work with חומר ובלבנים, which means, as the Gemara says, that the first started with חומר ובלבנים, doesn't mean just it started in time. That means the main purpose of their work is חומר ובלבנים. And most of the time they spent working with חומר ובלבנים. So much so that we see at the end, right before they left Mitzrayim, a while before they left Mitzrayim, when Paroh made it even worse for the Yidden, what was worse? Till then, he gave them the teven, which is the straw to put into making bricks, and they had to make the bricks. And later he said, \"I'm not giving you any more teven. You have to get that yourself, in addition to making the same amount of bricks that you made till now.\" So we see that even at the end, they were all involved in the bricks. So we see that the main avodah was חומר ובלבנים. Throughout all the years of the shibud, the main work was to do the inyan of building.

And the Rebbe explains there is a deep meaning here. We all know that the purpose of creation and the purpose of Matan Torah, the purpose is לעשות לו יתברך דירה בתחתונים. Yidden should make for the Eibershter a dirah. A dirah means a house, a dwelling place down here. So the job of a Yid is always in building, spiritual building, building a home for the Eibershter. And any mitzvah that you do, any good deed that we do, whether it's official mitzvah or it's doing not a mitzvah, but doing your own things לשם שמים, בכל דרכיך דעהו, anything that you do, you are building, taking part in building a building for the Aibershter, a dirah for the Aibershter. Now we know that kelipah is zeh le'umat zeh. Whatever kedushah wants, kelipah wants it should be done for the sake of kelipah. So since the purpose for in kedushah is to make a dirah for the Aibershter, which we would call sometimes in pasuk it says, \"עיר אלוקינו\", that there is the city of Hashem, because a city is made up of buildings, and buildings are made of bricks. So we build through our avodat Hashem, we build bricks and houses for עיר אלוקינו, for the Aibershter. So kelipah wants to do the same thing for kelipah. So therefore, what does kelipah want? To do things to build a building for kelipah, the opposite of kedushah. And that's why Paroh, which represents the inyan of kelipah, wanted the Yidden basically to build. Beruchniyut, that means to build a building for kelipah, which means he wants them to do things which are wrong. And every time you do an aveirah, every time you do something that's wrong, you're adding a brick to a building, but the wrong building, not the building of Hashem, the עיר אלוקינו, but the building of kelipah. And that was the reason why they started with חומר ובלבנים, and throughout the whole time, physically, it was חומר ובלבנים, the main thing was material for building, because this was the whole point of Paroh, to make the Yidden build a dirah for kelipah.

And it's interesting, it doesn't say they made them work with stones, but with bricks. We know that it says that we know stones are בידי שמים. Stones are chopped out from the mountain naturally, the way the Aibershter made it. Bricks are made by human beings. Bricks are you take cement and you make, mix it with water, and you make a brick. So bricks, בידי אדם, and that's the difference. In kedushah, you make you work with maaseh which is not מעשה בידי אדם, but it's מעשה שמים, that the Aibershter made, the Aibershter made stones. But by klipah, Since they don't have the connection to the Aibershter, so what they want is everything that's מעשה ידי אדם. And they made them build a building, build a dirah for klipah through חומר ובלבנים. ובלבנים, with bricks, which is מעשה ידי אדם, something that people do. And when the Yidden went out of Mitzrayim, this is when they got rid of this whole thing of making a dirah for klipah, but from then on, the Yidden got a special koach to make a דירה לו יתברך בתחתונים, a dirah for the Aibershter. And as what as it was in Mitzrayim, the same thing is this galus. This galus is that klipah wants us to make a dirah lo is it for for klipah. And the Aibershter gave us koach that we should make only a דירה לו יתברך, and when that dirah for Hashem is finished, that's when we will have the geulah with the coming of משיח בקרוב ממש.