Weekly Davar - Living to work or working to live? (Behar)
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Behar
(Leviticus 25:1-26:2)
12 th May 2011
8th Iyar 5771
Thank you for the feedback on last week’s davar. I’ve never received so much and, surprisingly, everyone agreed with me. I am always happy to hear feedback – and you are always welcome to disagree as well!
Torah Portion
The Torah portion begins with the laws of shmita, where the Jewish people are commanded not to plant their fields or tend to them every seventh year. Every 50th year is the yovel, the Jubilee year, where agricultural activity is also prohibited.
These two commandments fall into one of the seven categories of evidence that indicate God gave the Torah. If the idea is merely to give the land a rest, then the command should be to leave fallow one seventh of the land each year. To command a society that eats only what it grows to stop cultivating the land every 7th year, one has to be either God or Jim Jones. Your religion would last for 7 years after which you would kill them all from starvation.
There is not much in the way of Torah that university professors have embraced. But when it comes to a Sabbatical year, they seem to be more religious than most Rabbis I know!
At the time of the Torah, farming was the business of the Jewish people. If they were not allowed to farm the land every seventh year, what exactly were they supposed to do during those 12 months? As far as I know there were no golf courses in the Middle East in those days.
A number of years ago I knew a young man who had sold his business for around £5 million pounds after tax. He was in his late 20s and that money would see him through a good few years. In fact, if you have £5 million at 3% interest, that’s £150,000 a year. I could certainly live on that with 7 kids and he had none. He was perplexed, however, with what he was going to do? Family and friends were telling him that he had to find another business promptly or he would soon become lost and depressed. He was in a dangerous situation, they told him (I wouldn’t mind a few such dangers myself). I asked him if he had been living to work, or working to live? Working to live was his answer, of course. If so, then what had he been living for? He did not know.
Work can be such a distraction. It can give a quasi sense of meaning – the meaning of making money, the meaning of success. But life has so much more to offer than that.
I’m not saying that a person cannot find true and deep meaning in what he does for a living – but the fact that he is good at what he does and makes lots of money doing it does not and of itself give it value.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the thrill of the chase and forget what it is that we are chasing. Deep down, we human beings are not chasing money; we are not chasing success for the sake of success; we are not chasing honour. We want to do something that matters; we want to contribute to our world and leave a legacy for ourselves – and children alone are not enough of a legacy.
Torah had a safety valve for the Jewish Nation. Every seven years you may not work for a whole year. Stop working and spend time reflecting; spend time with your wife; spend time studying; spend time investing in your children; spend time doing charitable work – the possibilities were endless. A year of refocus so that when a person went back to work 12 months later he could do so with a focus as to what was important in his life.
This is a wise commandment indeed and it served the Jewish People well. It doesn’t work in the same way nowadays that we are not an agrarian society. But the message is still there. Work – by all means; make money – by all means; be successful – by all means. But make sure you know why you are doing it, what your priorities are and what will make you feel, at the end of your life, that you did something that mattered.
Work can be such a distraction. It can give a quasi sense of meaning – the meaning of making money, the meaning of success. But life has so much more to offer than that.
I’m not saying that a person cannot find true and deep meaning in what he does for a living – but the fact that he is good at what he does and makes lots of money doing it does not and of itself give it value.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the thrill of the chase and forget what it is that we are chasing. Deep down, we human beings are not chasing money; we are not chasing success for the sake of success; we are not chasing honour. We want to do something that matters; we want to contribute to our world and leave a legacy for ourselves – and children alone are not enough of a legacy.
Torah had a safety valve for the Jewish Nation. Every seven years you may not work for a whole year. Stop working and spend time reflecting; spend time with your wife; spend time studying; spend time investing in your children; spend time doing charitable work – the possibilities were endless. A year of refocus so that when a person went back to work 12 months later he could do so with a focus as to what was important in his life.
This is a wise commandment indeed and it served the Jewish People well. It doesn’t work in the same way nowadays that we are not an agrarian society. But the message is still there. Work – by all means; make money – by all means; be successful – by all means. But make sure you know why you are doing it, what your priorities are and what will make you feel, at the end of your life, that you did something that mattered.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Shaul Rosenblatt
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