Work or Service?

Omri Brinner
February 2009
Work or Service?
I will start by stating that the word “AVODAH” doe not mean “service”; the meaning of the word is either work or labor. A more accurate translation of the word “service” in Hebrew would be “She’irut”. In answering the given question it is important to ask which word came first as the name of the organization, Avodah or Service.
The religious affiliations in the website and in its content may change in some way depending which word is used. If the word is Avodah (work, labor) then one can claim the organization has missionary agendas (although it is not common in Judaism) in the way the young volunteers present their mission and their background. The word “service” on the other hand has more social connotations and it seems as if the true mission of the organization and its men and women is to help and serve less privileged and fortunate communities. This theory is backed by the way the “AVODAH” volunteers look in the website pictures: secular and modern.
Two different aspects that I noticed in the website design are the usage of the colors Blue and White, Israel’s colors, and the term “Jewish life”. Although these two aspects seem to have national-Jewish affiliations that support the missionary theory, I believe they actually strengthen the “service” theory by the fact that they are part of an agenda and not dominant aspects of this organization.