Pirke Avot, verse ten: work

Now, verse ten is a doozie. Here’s Hertz again:

Shemayah and Avtalyon received the tradition from the preceding. Shemayah said, Love work; hate lordship; and seek no intimacy with the ruling power.

Let’s see. work is here m’lachah, as distinct from avodah; it’s the word for labor-that-is-prohibited-on-the-Shabbat, as in Genesis 2:2, he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. More a connotation like woodwork than like working in the fields, although it encompasses that as well in its general sense. It is also used for business, as with money transactions or book-keeping, or the running of a household.

This verse often seems to be taken as a point of pride for Jews, in distinction to the Greek and Roman and Western tradition of idle nobility. We love work, goes the interpretation, and that prevents us from oppressing the laborer and keeps us on the good side of socio-economic issues. Hertz talks about “the slowness among Western nations to recognize the dignity of labor” in a note to this verse. I’m a little nervous about the ability to legitimately translate this as love business. There’s an odd mutuality to the caricatures of Jews and Christians in each other’s eyes that is worth recognizing.

But the rabbis generally use this verse to talk about the ills of idleness. Idleness is bad for a variety of reasons. It leads to depression, says Rabbi Jonah. Judah the Prince says that idleness leads to gossip and the ruin of a reputation, for a man who is not seen to work is like an unmarried woman who wears finery; everyone wants to know where the money comes from. Simeon ben Zimah says that idleness leads to the loss of independence and the ability to live on the income of your own labor, which in turn leads to robbing others to survive. Menahem ben Solomon says that even the rich must work, rather than remain idle.

It was forbidden, in the late Temple days and for some centuries following, to accept payment for teaching Torah or for acting as a judge. Rabbis were rabbis, but they were also something else. Hillel was a woodchopper, Shammai was a mason. Akiva was a shepherd. Yochanan ben Zakai was a shoemaker. Even into the Middle Ages, the heads of yeshivas were expected to have a trade; Rashi had a winery. Or didn’t; some of the stuff we know is actually the stuff that other people made up, a long time ago. But even the knowledge that in making stuff up about our beloved sages, we made up that they worked with their hands.

On the other hand, it is conspicuous to me that where most of the m’lachah in the Tanach is creative work, work of an artisan, there are no stories (that I’m aware of) of Rabbis who make their living as artisans. No goldsmiths, woodworkers, stone carvers (Shammai is presumed to build walls and such), weavers, jewelers, bakers, toolmakers, glassblowers or basketweavers. Not that there weren’t such, but that there aren’t stories of such. And as I read the text love work, with the specific use of m’lachah, the work of the Creator in making the universe, I would like to think of it as a love, not just for making a living, but for creative work, whether it’s farming or carpentry.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.