[Avodah] On Ways of Making a Living

[Prof. Levine]

In some circles work seems to be frowned 
upon.  The selections below show that this  is 
not a Torah true attitude. I have quoted from 
RSRH at length to show that those who oppose 
religious Jewish men working are advocating 
something that does not seem to be in consonance 
with the Torah and the Talmud.  YL

The following is from RSRH's essay Talmudic 
Judaism and Society  The Relationship of the 
Talmud to Judaism and the Social Attitudes of the 
Talmud's Adherents that appears in Vol VII of his Collected Writings.

Note the sentence below "The passages quoted 
above, which represent only a small selection 
from among many others, should be sufficient 
evidence to refute the  notion that the Talmud is 
hostile to honest toil, especially farming."

On Ways of Making a Living
The Talmud attaches great importance to a 
person's earning an independent living so that he 
will not need charity. The Talmud stresses that a 
person must seek to achieve economic independence 
by every means with in his power, as long as he 
attains it in an honest manner. One should not be 
ashamed of any work one may have to do and should 
be willing to suffer any amount of hardship in 
order to avoid becoming dependent on others.
The Talmud holds work in high esteem, citing the 
principle, "Great is work, for it honors the 
worker" (Nedarim 49b). If you see an animal that 
fell dead in the street, get to work and skin it 
then and there, so that you may earn some money. 
Do not say, "I am a priest, or an important 
person; this work is beneath my dignity" 
(Pesachim 113a). "Live on the Sabbath no better 
than during the week rather than to be dependent 
on others for help" (Pesachim II2a). "Accept work 
that you would normally find repulsive rather 
than be in need of help from your fellow men" (Baba Bathra I l0a).
The Sages of the Talmud had such high regard for 
their scholarship that they refused to "make it a 
spade to dig with," as they put it (Chapters of 
the Fathers 4:7). They taught without 
remuneration and supported themselves mainly with 
other work: handicrafts, farming or small 
business. Just as they themselves did this kind 
of work for their  livelihood, the Sages urged 
others to do likewise (Kiddushin 30b). As much as 
it is a father's duty to instruct his son in 
Jewish religious law, it is his duty to teach him 
a craft. According to one view, any type of 
honest work was as good as a manual skill, but 
others held that a father should see to it that 
his son learn a manual skill even if he were to 
choose some other type of work, for only the 
manual trades can assure a steady income 
(Kiddushin 30b). The Talmud holds manual skills 
in high esteem. Manual skills will always be 
needed in this world; therefore, "fortunate he 
who has acquired a good craft" (Kiddushin 82b). 
"A famine may last for seven years, but it will 
not pass through the door of a skilled artisan" 
(Sanhedrin 29a). "Love work and do not aspire to 
a high position" (Chapters of the Fathers 1: l0). 
"He who fears God and lives from the work of his 
hands is doubly fortunate, for he will be happy 
in this world as well as in the world to come" 
(Berachoth 8a). A father should teach his son a 
trade that is least likely to lead to wrongdoing 
and also will leave him sufficient time for study 
(Kiddushin 82a). A father should also not teach 
his son an occupation which will bring him into close contact with women.
The Talmud also thinks highly of farming, even 
though it is aware that some people prefer to 
enter business. The Talmud tells of one sage who 
passed a field where the ripe ears of corn, 
swaying in the breeze, seemed to wave to him in 
greeting. Said the sage to them good humoredly, 
"You can wave to me all you want, but it is still 
better to be in business than to work with you" 
(Yebamoth 63a). But the view generally found in 
the Talmud is different. A person who does not 
have a field of his own is not considered a 
proper man, for it is written (Psalms 115,16), •• 
[God] gave the earth to the children of men." 
Grow your own produce instead of purchasing it 
from others. Even though the cost may be the 
same, the produce you have sown yourself brings more blessings (Yebamoth 63a).
In the enumeration of Divine punishments in 
Deuteronomy 28,66 the words, "Your life will 
always hover at an uncertain distance," are 
interpreted as referring to one who purchases his 
supply of grain from year to year. The words that 
follow, "You will live in apprehension night and 
day," refer to one who buys his supply of grain 
from week to week, and the final words of the 
verse, "You will have no faith in your life," 
refer to one who has to go to a bread dealer for 
his daily supply of bread (Menachoth 103b). "He 
who tills [literally, "serves"] his own  soil 
will have his fill of bread" (Proverbs 12,11); 
this is explained to mean that only one who works 
his own soil like a farmhand will have enough bread to eat (Sanhedrin 58b).
 From all the above we can clearly see how 
strongly the Talmud urges that every person 
should possess and till his own soil and obtain 
his food supply from his own farmland. In 
accordance with agricultural conditions in the 
Talmudic era, a farm was considered prosperous if 
it was divided into three equal portions devoted 
to cereals, olives and vines (Baba Metzia 107a).
We are told in the Midrash Rabbah to Genesis 12,1 
that when God commanded Abraham to go to the land 
that would belong to him and to his descendants, 
and he saw the inhabitants of Mesopotamia eating, 
drinking and making merry, Abraham said, "May it 
be God's Will that my portion should not be in 
this land." But when he came to the hilly terrain 
of Tyre at the border of Palestine and saw the 
inhabitants busily weeding their fields at the 
right time and working their soil diligently at 
the proper season, he said, "May it be God's Will 
that my portion should be in this land." 
Thereupon God said to him, "To your descendants will I give this land."
These words indicate how keenly aware our Sages 
were of the moral value of farming, which 
required regular working hours. In the same 
spirit, Jewish religious law is centered on the 
soil; all the Jewish festivals are associated 
with farm labor and agriculture. Yissachar, 
the  tribe celebrated for its intellectual 
prowess, was a tribe of farmers, The words of the 
Prophet Micah (4,4), "They shall sit every man 
beneath his vine and beneath his fig tree," 
describe the Jewish ideal of national prosperity.
This ideal survived even after the Jewish people 
had been driven from their land and forced to 
live in other lands as exiles. A glance into the 
voluminous Order of Zeraim, which contains the 
religious laws concerning agriculture, as well as 
into Tractates Baba Kamma, Baba Metzia and Baba 
Bathra, which deal with civil law but also 
discuss agricultural questions, should be 
sufficient to show how much the Sages of the 
Talmud knew about the characteristics of various 
agricultural species and about the requirem~nts 
for the care of crops, plants and trees, 
depending on such factors as the quality and 
location of the soil. Such familiarity with the 
problems of agriculture could have been gained 
only through personal experience in farming; it 
proves that the Sages not only preached the 
benefits of agriculture but actually practiced in 
their own lives what they preached. In fact, they 
and their disciples were so completely dependent 
on farming for their livelihood that one master 
of Rabbinic law considered it necessary to 
request his many students not to attend his 
lectures during the spring and fall seasons so 
that they could devote all their time during 
those seasons to sowing and reaping and have no 
worries about their food supply for the rest of the year (Berachoth 35b).
Needless to say, Jews were engaged in business 
and industry also during the Talmudic period. 
These pursuits were just as indispensable to the 
nation's prosperity as agriculture. The farmer 
himself was dependent on business. What would he 
have done with his produce if there had been no 
merchants to buy the products of his work and 
sell them elsewhere? This relationship of mutual 
benefit is already described in the Pentateuch, 
where we read of the fraternal, mutually 
beneficial ties between the tribes of Yissachar 
and Zebulun, the former devoted to agriculture 
and study, and the latter to business and commerce (Deuteronomy 33,18).
Nevertheless, the Sages of the Talmud cautioned 
against excessive involvement in business and 
trading activities. They said that "there is no 
blessing in money earned from trade with overseas 
countries" (Pesachim 50b). While farming affords 
some free time for study at the end of the day's 
work and particularly during the winter season, 
experience has shown that merchants and 
businessmen often stop studying altogether 
(Eruvin 55a), and that one who is too deeply 
immersed in business will not grow in wisdom 
(Chapters of the Fathers 2:6). Hence the 
admonition: "Limit your business activities and 
gain [more] time for continuing your spiritual 
education" (Chapters of the Fathers 4: 12). Only 
if you limit the amount of time you devote to 
business will you be able to add to your 
knowledge (Chapters of the Fathers 6:6).
We have already noted that the Sages did not make 
use of their scholarship as a source of income. 
Each of them therefore had to engage in some 
other occupation; hence they also pointed out: 
"An excellent thing is the study of the Law 
combined with an occupation that yields a living. 
Study of the Law without some kind of work cannot 
endure" (Chapters of the Fathers 2:2).
The passages quoted above, which represent only a 
small selection from among many others, should be 
sufficient evidence to refute the  notion that 
the Talmud is hostile to honest toil, especially 
farming. If, during the centuries that followed, 
Jews in European countries became strangers to 
agriculture and were more conspicuously drawn to 
business and commerce, it was not the fault of 
the Talmud, nor was it due to any inherent Jewish 
distaste or lack of aptitude for farming. The 
fault lay solely with the hostile attitude of the 
nations and peoples that either categorically 
forbade Jews to acquire land or else subjected 
land purchase and ownership by Jews to such 
severe restrictions as to make it virtually 
impossible for Jews to become farmers. In 
addition, farming, more than any other 
occupation, requires that those who engage in it 
enjoy a secure legal status. As long as Jews did 
not enjoy equal rights and equal protection under 
the law with their non-Jewish neighbors and had 
to live in constant fear of being driven from 
hearth and home by a willful bureaucracy or by 
the unleashed hatred of a bigoted populace, Jews 
were not free to devote their skills and energies 
to agricultural pursuits. This was the reason why 
Jews wen: forced to concentrate on acquiring 
movable goods that they could take with them 
wherever they might be forced to flee, and to 
cultivate skills with which they could make a 
living for themselves and their families, no 
matter where they might find themselves.
Unless we are very much mistaken, there is no 
question but that,  given freedom, equal rights, 
and the time needed to become adept at this 
particular occupation, which really requires 
training and habituation from early youth, Jews 
will ultimately return to agriculture, the 
ancestral pursuit which they loved and which was 
intimately linked with their original destiny as a nation.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20120101/9ca411b3/attachment-0001.htm>