COMMENTARY: A Jewish view of labor

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ It’s fashionable today, even politically advantageous, to trash the role of labor unions in American life. During election campaigns many politicians ominously invoke the specter of”big labor”as a negative force. But I’ve noticed even ardent […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ It’s fashionable today, even politically advantageous, to trash the role of labor unions in American life. During election campaigns many politicians ominously invoke the specter of”big labor”as a negative force.


But I’ve noticed even ardent foes of trade unions happily celebrate Labor Day each year _ especially when it means a day off from work.

These factors perhaps explain why the recent death of Lane Kirkland, the former president of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL_CIO), received minimal media coverage. Kirkland deserved better because he was a gifted leader from America’s South who for decades led the fight against that global threat to human freedom: Soviet communism.

Kirkland was a strong internationalist who offered powerful support to the Solidarity movement in Poland that eventually ended 45 years of communist rule. He was also an indefatigable ally of the Soviet Jewry movement at a time when many other American leaders were wary of antagonizing the Kremlin.

And Kirkland clearly understood the lethal pathology of anti-Semitism, and opposed it when hatred of Jews and Judaism appeared anywhere in the world. The AFL-CIO president was, as the current buzzwords put it,”always there.” Kirkland’s support of Jewish causes reminded me once again of the inextricable links between the Jewish religious tradition and labor, and between Jews and the union movement in America.

Judaism’s historical teachings about the dignity of labor shaped the view of millions of people in this country, even those who professed to be anti-religious or totally secular. One of Kirkland’s predecessors, Samuel Gompers, a Jew, was elected in 1886 as the AFL’s first president.

In the ancient world, physical labor was viewed with contempt by people like Aristotle and Cicero. The Greek philosopher believed laborers were unfit for citizenship, while the Roman leader declared no gentleman could ever be a laborer or mechanic. Labor was a necessary evil the upper classes avoided. Such work was done by slaves or captive peoples.

But the Jewish religion, beginning in the Bible, had an entirely different understanding of physical toil. Ecclesiastes declares:”Sweet is the sleep of the laborers whether they eat little or much, but the demands of the rich will not allow the laborers to sleep.”The prophets Jeremiah and Malachi sympathetically described the laborer who was unfairly treated by an employer.

Employers were instructed to pay employees a just wage before sunset of each workday. And of course the weekly Sabbath must be observed as a day of abstinence from labor.


An ancient rabbi, Simeon ben Yohai, taught that the verse from Genesis,”Six days shall you labor and do all your work,”is as binding as the commandment to rest on the seventh day in honor of the Sabbath. The perceptive Jewish teaching that physical idleness”leads to degeneration”of both mind and body is a fact modern experts on leisure and retirement have come to recognize.

Parents are commanded to teach their children”a trade lest they fall into lives of thievery and crime.”And one remarkable Talmudic passage declares that”people who live from the labor of their hands are greater than those who fear heaven.”Another profound insight is that”all study of Torah, of religion, which is not combined with some physical labor is meaningless in the end and brings sin in its train.” Rabbis followed their own advice and often worked as blacksmiths, shoemakers, bakers, potters and tailors. It is only in modern times that the professional rabbinate has emerged _ not unlike Christian clergy who work solely as ministers and priests. Attempts to create”worker-priests”in the Third World are a throwback to the ancient concept that a religious teacher must work in the”real world.” As early as 1918, America’s Reform Rabbis adopted resolutions on labor far ahead of their time. The rabbis called for an eight-hour workday, a guaranteed minimum wage, and collective bargaining between labor and management. On Labor Day 1999 some of these things are taken for granted, but 80 years ago they were considered wildly radical demands that would never be enacted into law.

Finally,”avodah,”the Hebrew word for labor, is the same term used to describe synagogue worship services. A Talmudic rabbi said people”must work with two hands before God will bestow blessings upon them,”and the great Moses Maimonides wrote:”A coin earned by manual labor is worth more than all the revenue a prince derives from gifts.”

DEA END RUDIN

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!