Kol Nidre Sermon - 5784 - On Workahalism

Moses was a great leader, but struggled as a husband. The reason was simple. He was a workaholic. It was his Achillies heal.

There are multiple stories, both in the Torah itself and in later collections of Midrashim that speak about his challenges with balance.

The most famous involves a scene where Moses, after leading the people out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, and bringing the people to the foot of Mnt. Sinai, finds himself completely exhausted with the task of caring for the Israelite community. We find him, sitting all day, as people approach him with their problems, lines of questioners around the block, asking for his council, his advice, his rulings. He’s so busy, he doesn’t have time to even go to the bathroom. This happens day in, and day out.

Finally, observing his son-in-law about to collapse, his father-in-law Jethro confronts him:

“The thing you are doing is not right; you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.” (Ex 18:19-20).

Jethro begs Moses to delegate. Find judges who can settle these people’s disputes. Only deal with the hard ones, that they can’t, “Make it easier for yourself by letting them share the burden with you.”

Jethro then finishes with one more piece of advice. Finding a little balance in your life is good for everyone. Although you think you are doing a good job, you are dropping balls. People may not come to you because they don’t want to wait, or they may not believe your ruling because you are too rushed. And if God calls, do you really think you will have the ability to shift focus and answer?

Moses listens and sets up the first court system in Jewish history.

I wish I could say that Moses does a good job of pivoting, but that’s not how addictions work. Workaholism is woven into his DNA. In fact, this fact of his personality is one of the reasons, according to our ancient Rabbis, that Moses was chosen to lead the people out of Egypt.

There is a famous folk story that God chose Moses as the savior of the people, because one day when he was tending to his sheep, one of them broke free and escaped. Telling his attendant to stay with the flock, Moses went after it. God saw he cared for this little creature and appeared to Moses as the burning bush.

Most people tell the story of the sheep-gone-astray to show Moses’ compassion. How he cares about the individual sheep over the flock. And that might be true.

Or Moses might just be type A. He might be the ancient equivalent of the person who stays late at the office, who takes the 11pm phone call, who skips the soccer game for the meeting.

So it should come as no surprise that later in Moses’s story, we get a glimpse of his home life. Commentators throughout the centuries have written about Moses’ wife Tzipporah. They’ve remarked on the fact that Moses is so busy talking with God throughout his forty years in the dessert, that he has no time for his wife, something they imagine pains her greatly. In fact, they write, Moses even pulls away from her when he isn’t directly talking with God, just to keep his schedule clear, in case God needs him.

Work is endless. And even if you delegate, as Moses does after his encounter with his father-in-law, he finds a way to expand it. He spends less time judging, but then doubles down on his encounters with the Divine.

Moses is sick. But so are so many of us.

We are currently living through, maybe, the most important conversation around work and boundaries, since the 40-hour work week was instituted in the late 1930s. Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the pandemic is that work must be more sustainable. People are now working more from home, commuting less, taking more flexible time. People are questioning whether our current work culture is sustainable with over half of all workers actively shopping around their professional networks, looking for a new job.

In fact, 2020 gave birth to a host of movements that have taken the working world by storm. We are “quiet quitting,” meaning doing only what is asked of us and setting the firmest of boundaries. I’ve seen dozens of books and podcasts that warn against trying to get fulfillment from one’s career or making friends with co-workers. They advise that a job is simply a way to make money. Co-workers are simply the people that you do your job with. Neither should play any part in your identity.

There is a reason that the premise of the Apple TV+ show Severance has taken people by storm. In it, society figures out how to completely sever a person’s consciousness in two. One can turn on their work selves and home selves, each with their own memories, friendships, and even personalities. And one cannot tap into the other. There is no way to take work home with you because you have no idea when you leave work, how you spent your day.

I’m not surprised by this turn. Culture change sometimes requires that we swing the pendulum far to the extreme other end of the spectrum. And this newfound approach to work is a huge culture change.

But the funny thing is that while these new attitudes are true for some, in our congregation, many of us, me included, never lost our obsession with work. The pandemic just helped us find a way to sometimes do it in our slippers.

There are no shortage of reasons why many of us still struggle with work addictions.

One important factor revolves around the absence of community in so many of our lives. A generation or two ago, our relationships were diversified. We had home and work, but also clubs, volunteer opportunities, and neighborhood associations. You, by being here, buck the trend in that you have religion as a source of connection. Most Americans do not.

But with so many fewer options, the ones we do have become more important. Since work relationships need to be earned, we invest heavily in our professional success, hoping that the respect we receive at the office will turn into personal admiration.

One would think that in tightening of our social networks, we would also emphasize our time with family. But one doesn’t always lead to the other. That’s in part because work is usually easier. Work has stresses, but usually we walk into work and get the feedback that we are smart, capable, useful.

That’s not always the case at home. There is a modern Hebrew adage (actually borrowed from the New Testiment): ain nasi v’ain navi, b’veito, “there is no price or prophet in one’s house.” You might have reached the highest eschelons of professional success, but even the most successful people in life can be crippled by a three year old’s tantruming or grow rageful at a thirteen-year-old's eye rolling. I generally know what I’m doing as a Rabbi. I’m flying so blind as a parent. When our personal life makes us feel inadequate, work can become a helpful escape.

Then there’s the general anxiety that many people feel about not living up to generational expectations. In America, every generation has done better than the last, that is until recently. A large percentage of us, especially those who are younger, will make less money, live in a smaller house, have less retirement than our parents. Especially for the middle class, things are just harder. We can accept that, or we can engage in the symphisian task of trying to change that, forcing ourselves to work overtime to make up for the barriers society puts in our way and for an ever-diminishing bite at the American dream.

Sadly the internet doesn’t help. People don’t post about how miserable they are at work. They tell stories about their success, their promotions, their new opportunities. Most of us aren’t doing much worse than the average worker, but our Facebook feed won’t tell us that. Our social networks all too often make us feel like unless we are sprinting, we will continue to be left behind.

All of these are sociological factors that lead to harmful attitudes about work. But one reason that we may not have considered, is that workaholism is woven into the very fabric of our tradition.

Think for a minute about what the Torah says about work. Adam and Eve are living blissfully in the Garden of Eden, with everything laid out before them. Then, they eat the forbidden fruit and God kicks them out of paradise. What is the one of the key punishments they face?

Cursed be the ground because of you;

By hard labor shall you eat of it

All the days of your life:

Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you.

But your food shall be the grasses of the field;

By the sweat of your brow

Shall you get bread to eat,

In other words, work is going to be hard and miserable. It’s going to dominate your life. You won’t get a break.

For three thousand years, no one seemed to question that wisdom. Even the advent of Shabbat didn’t really do justice. It might give us a day off a week, but if we can’t manage ourselves the other six days, we are still in trouble.

What we need is to find a balance. Some middle ground between workaholism and the newfound movement to simply go through the motions at work. And to do that, we have to go back and revisit some of the root causes of why our society struggles in the first place with enacting boundaries. For now, I’ll give you two.

The first thing we need to do is to reinvest in relationships.

One of the great Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote in his book Lonely Man of Faith about the fact that human beings have two urges within us. The first, called the majestic urge is the desire to build, to own, to conquer, to excel. It’s what pushes us to get promotions, to work on our brand, to succeed. Though important, it’s only half of what makes us, us.

The other urge is called the covenantal urge, that that’s the part of us that wants to be seen, loved, and known.

Think about these two urges as muscles. If you have ever worked out you know, it’s a lot easier to work a muscle that is already strong. Our society excels at the majestic part of ourselves but has let key pieces of our covenantal selves atrophy. So we keep doing what we are good at, and let the weaker part, grow even weaker.

We need to reinvest in people, so that work holds less weight.

You may be thinking, I’m going to ask you to get more involved in TNT, and that will likely help. But so will joining clubs, spending time on the phone with relatives, and taking days off to do meaningful things with your kids.

As strange as it sounds, you should double down on the things that you have no time for. And you will watch as your priorities fall into place. Fulfilled in other ways, work will organically shrink.

The second thing we need to do is be OK with enough. The hard thing about work is that it’s endless. There is always more to be done.

Our ancestors understood this well. One of the most famous complaints about work appears in the Mishnah, when Rabbi Tarfon bemoans:

...the day is short, and the work is plentiful, and the laborers are indolent, and the reward is great, and the master of the house is insistent. (Avot 2:15)

His solution: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it

We have to work. But we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to do everything.

If you are like me, it gives you heart palpitations to think of “not finishing the work.” But Judaism is clear. You are allowed to fall short, provided you have sufficiently tried.

I was once given a piece of advice from a friend. Raised in a world, like many of you, where it felt like a failure to get B’s in school, we need to reframe what it means to get a B. B doesn’t stand for “not and A.” It’s an abbreviation for a “better life.”

That’s easier said than done. Saying no and boundary making comes with costs. You will have to drop balls. You will anger and frustrate co-workers. You will not be the center of everything (and that means letting go of control which feels good).

But in setting boundaries, you won’t be Moses.

I often think about the tragedy of Moses’ death. He gave his whole life to leading the people through the desert, only to end up on the wrong side of the Jordan river, unable to make it to the promised land with them. And sadly, if you read the tone and tenor of his death speech in the book of Deuteronomy, he sees the arc of his life as ending in failure.

He had a wife, kids, family. He brought the people the Torah. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives from Egyptian bondage. But he couldn’t see it. At work, you are only as good as your next project and he was fired before he could see it through.

I believe Moses would still be Moses, even if he gave a little less to his work.

And so will we. Perhaps even better versions of ourselves.