By the Sweat of Your Brow: Reflections on Work and the Workplace in Classic Jewish Thought (review)

The Jewish people have been defining their relationship to work for thousands of years, ever since Avraham was accumulating “flocks and herds and donkeys” (Bereshit 12:16), and Yaakov was setting an example by working for Lavan “with all my might” (Bereshit 31:6.). It may seem surprising that meaningful, interesting, and consistent insights about work and the workplace can be extracted from a tradition so ancient and diverse. Yet Professor Schnall has done a remarkable job in presenting a coherent approach to this topic based on Jewish sources widely varied in time, economic background, and purpose. Scripture and stricture, midrash and minhag merge to give us a distinctive Jewish approach in which work is dignified without being glorified.

The author, a dean and professor at New York’s Yeshiva University, is a respected expert in the field of workplace relations. In this book he combines his secular expertise on this subject with his considerable Jewish learning, resulting in a work which makes Jewish workplace ethics comprehensible and accessible to a broad audience. Most of the book’s nine chapters cover topics of universal interest such as the work ethic, the social responsibility of business, and the special relationship to public servants. There is also a very interesting chapter on a controversial topic which has long been central in Jewish life: the proper balance between work and Torah study. The final chapter draws some intriguing practical conclusions.

Let us examine some examples of the pragmatic, non-ideological approach which emerges. Work, as we mentioned, is dignified but not glorified. While the Bible intro duces labor “as a scourge and punishment to mankind,” the author comments that “normative rabbinic sources largely ignore this passage in their consideration of the place of work in the social scheme. Neither a curse nor purely an instrumental necessity of subsistence, they look upon it as an ennobling facet of moral development” (pp. 46–47).

In contrast to the modern drive for equality, “the social goal pursued by the interpreters of the tradition was not equality per se, but rather moral reciprocity and balance” (p. 16). In particular, a consistent, even relentless series of laws and admoni tions militates against any dimension of servitude in the employer-employee relation ship. Economic equality is not pursued, and economic success is in any case viewed as a pleasant amenity rather than as an important social or religious objective.

The author does a good job in explaining the significance of Judaism’s obligation- based approach to human relations, which is not easily recast in the modern-day vocabulary of rights. In the context of this insight, the book explains that the employer’s obligation to treat the worker fairly is balanced by the employee’s obligation to be assiduous in his or her performance.

A particular emphasis of the book is that Judaism does not prescribe or exalt any particular economic system. The general deference to local custom, or minhag, guaran tees a degree of tolerance and pragmatism in regard to the economic superstructure. The concern of Jewish law and thought is not to dictate a particular structure, but rather to provide that no matter what type of economic structure society chooses, safeguards exist to guarantee the dignity and protection of the worker and the possibility of the employer to get the job done.

The book’s focus is descriptive, not comparative. While the author does present a cogent summary of alternative religious and ideological approaches to work and the workplace, these serve primarily to provide a context and a frame of reference for the book’s conclusions, and not as an independent topic of study.

Perhaps the most significant contribution of the book is that it clearly aims at relevance. The book is written in a professional and accessible idiom; the author brings many modern-day applications and makes interesting prescriptive diagnoses. Professor Schnall clearly...