Living Up Life

When Pharaoh stopped supplying straw but kept the quota of bricks the same, why not just double the quota? Why were their cities called arei miskenos? And what does the Midrash mean when it says Moshe sinned with the word "az" and fixed it with the same word? Rabbi Asaf Prisman starts from a question of Rav Zev Leff and a halacha in the Rambam, then brings a Gemara in Beitzah with the Chasam Sofer. Along the way comes a prisoner in a Soviet labor camp, made to turn a handle in his cell wall for ten years, and what he found out when he was freed. For anyone whose days feel like an endless loop of work and chores, this changes how every ordinary hour looks.