Jews never invested significant mean-
ing in their jobs. Such meaning came
from activities completely outside of
work: religious study, charity, family
life. Most relevant about a job was
whether it provided enough to support
one's family and afforded one the time
to study. Work was a means, not an end.
It was a part of the journey, not the en-
tire journey. One was not, therefore, de-
fined by one's job.
Judaism's stance toward work and
spirituality also is suggested by its teach-
ings regarding immortality. During the
Middle Ages, insignias of the professions
of the deceased were commonly chiseled
on tombstones. When people were
buried, the casket was often construct-
ed from the wooden table upon which
the deceased had worked: Even after
death, our work was part of who we
were and what we carried into eterni-
ty.
Since work is what we leave behind
in this world, it could be a way to achieve
personal immortality. When we study
Maimonides, his words are his immor-
tality. When we read Shakespeare or
see one of his plays performed, we
glimpse his place in mortality.
So, too, does the doctor who saves
lives, the lawyer who helps a defendant,
the secretary who creates an efficient
filing system, the architect who designs
a building: All are immortal. Their work
survives them. Every teacher's Kaddish
is his or her students. As a friend said,
"Every time I recommend a book to my
child to read, and that book had been
recommended to me by Mrs. Cohen, my
fourth-grade teacher, that's Mrs. Co-
hen's immortality."
The real revolution in how Jews
would think of work came with the sin-
gle biggest revolution in modern Jew-
ish thinking and endeavor: Zionism.
In the late 19th century, Zionism be-
gan to revolutionize Judaism's attitude
toward the world. Early Zionists not only
wanted to build a land; they wanted to
bring Jews from the reclusiveness of the
ghetto into engagement with the larg-
er.world. Zionism became a metaphor-
ic rejection of Jewish passivity.
Nothing symbolized this more than
physical work, and no work was more
crucial to early Zionism than farming
in Israel, which would connect Jews to
the land, the soil, and the rough reali-
ties of life.
Aharon David Gordon, a Zionist pio-
neer, clearly saw the link between avO-
dah ("worship") and avodah ("labor").
Believing that God could be approached
through physical labor, Gordon cele-
brated agricultural work as a supreme
act of personal, national and cosmic re-
demption. He believed that, by inte-
grating workers with the "organic
rhythms" of nature and the universe,
Many people work hard
and know who their boss is.
But they want to know for
Whom they really work.
toiling on the land let them experience
the unity and purpose of the cosmos. For
our generation as well, working in the
world also can be our way of stating that
we have a hand in orderly maintaining
the cosmos.
`Liberation'
From Work
We frequently erect walls around our
lives that fence us in and constrain us.
They blind us from the potentials with-
in us and around us. It is time to escape
the confines of these walls, to escape
from the inner slavery and the inner
Pharoah that we have allowed to en-
slave us. Below are eight gates of lib-
eration from this bondage of the
contemporary workplace.
I. Get a life
It is too easy to be possessed by our
professions, by the status they confer or
the material benefits they reap. To move
beyond that, do something spiritually
refreshing: Get involved in synagogue.
Feed the homeless. Care for AIDS pa-
tients. Volunteer for a non-profit board.
Do anything that offers you a sense of
altruism and a connection to something
higher.
II. Discover Sabbath
The Sabbath was intended to evoke
a sense of cosmic rest, to embody an in-
credible paradox: God, more powerful
than anything in the universe, also rest-
ed. We also rest on the Sabbath to re-
spond to the historical experience of the
Jewish people, as a memory of the Ex-
odus from Egypt, as a way to remember
our freedom from slavery.
The Sabbath teaches us that once a
week we can stop being doctors, den-
tists, salespeople, lawyers so we can be
who we really are. On the Sabbath, Jews
remember that they have souls and
depth, that they can speak to the uni-
verse and that the universe can speak
back.
III. Pray daily
In the Middle Ages, many Jewish the-
ologian-physicians wrote prayers and
meditations. Now, we need new prayers
for professionals and workers that can
help focus them on the day ahead, that
can help them give thanks to God for
what they have and ask God's help in
times of crisis and challenge. Such
prayers can help us know that we serve
something higher than ourselves, our
egos, our colleagues, or our customers.
IV. Don't define yourself by job or ca-
reer
Work is a necessity for human exis-
tence, but not the center of it. As Rab-
bi Dow Marmur wrote, "It is only those
who live to work, rather than work to
live, who are snobbish or status-seek-
ing about their jobs."
The "simplest" professions can be
metaphors for all human existence. To
God, nothing is wasted. Every kind of
gainful work can make us better people.
As the second-century sage, Ben Azzai,
said in Pirke Avot, the ethical section of
the Mishnah: "Treat no one lightly and
think nothing is useless, for everyone
has a moment and everything has its
place."
V. Accept failure
A story about non-Jewish saintliness
that illuminates our inner task: While
Mother Theresa helped the starving in
Ethiopia's famine in the 1980s, she was
asked, "How can you tend to the sick
and the dying knowing that you will not
be successful with everyone?"
"We are not here to be successful," she
answered. "We are here to be faithful."
We need to be faithful to a higher
sense of ourselves, faithful to a long-term
goal and vision. Pirke Avot puts it in a
slightly different way: "It is not up to
you to finish the work, but neither are
you free to desist from starting it." All
work is ultimately unfinished, but our
efforts should never be half-hearted.
VI. Stop trying to be perfect
Most professionals believe they have
to be omniscient and'onmipotent intheir
work. Recognize the margin of error you
can tolerate. It will be differenUor every
profession. To a journalista typo-
graphical error is less catastrophic than,
say, a landing gear error is to an airline
pilot. No one wants to commit errors in
his or her work, but sometimes the price
for perfectionism is the suppression of
creativity.
VII. Accept limits and boundaries
When the Jews received the Torah at
Sinai, there were boundaries around the —
base of the mountain beyond which the cy;
Israelites could not go. The Sabbath is
ood co
a boundary in time. Judaism has food
boundaries and its sexual boundaries 2
rule against incest and adultery.
Boundaries and limits speak against
the omniscience or omnipotence to (j)
LU
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