Head in Your Shoes
There seem to be two Jewish doctrines of work, as we see from a d'rashah of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Likkutei Sichot, vol. 1, pp. 187-8). The first is found in the Ten Commandments: "Six days shall you work, but the seventh

Leave time to be yourself, time for your home and family, time for Torah, time for prayer, time for the community.

day is Shabbat." (Exodus 20:9) The second is in parashat Vayak'hel, which says, "Six days shall work be done." (Exodus 35:2)


One doctrine is active, the other is passive. The Lubavitcher Rebbe suggests that the second version qualifies the first. "Six days shall you work" tells us about the importance of work and the dignity of labour. "Six days shall work be done" is a proviso: get the work done, but don't let it be your master. Do what is necessary, but don't make it your only priority or preoccupation. Leave time to be yourself, time for your home and family, time for Torah, time for prayer, time for the community.


The Rebbe illustrates his point by a story. A follower of Rabbi Dov Ber of Lubavitch once became the manager of a factory that made overshoes. It was soon obvious that his mind was becoming totally obsessed with the business, and nothing else mattered.


Rabbi Dov Ber said to him, "Feet in overshoes are commonplace - but how can you have a head sunk into overshoes?"


Wise in the Mind or in the Heart?
The Torah portion praises the chacham lev, "the person who is wise-hearted." The exact words are, "All who are wise-hearted among you shall come and do all that the Lord has commanded." (Exodus 35:10)


The phrase "wise-hearted" is rather puzzling. Wisdom is usually considered an attribute of the mind, not the heart. When we describe the rabbinic sages as chachamim, "wise ones", we mean it in the sense of clever scholars.


Looking at wisdom in this way, we wonder how Maimonides can speak of chachamim and chassidim almost in the same breath at the beginning of his Hil'chot De'ot ("The Laws of Character Traits"). We would have thought that the first category denotes cleverness and the second saintliness. We would have said that the chacham uses his mind and the chassid his heart. In Maimonides' terms, the chacham works out by means of thought that he should keep the commandments, while the chassid is moved to do even more than the law requires.


Comparing the activity of the mind and the heart appears to confuse the categories. Yet, this is not what we find in the Scriptures. The Book of Proverbs says (10:8), "chacham lev yikkach mitzvot", "the wise-hearted accepts commandments." This and other passages that link wisdom and the heart reinforce the conclusion that heart = mind.


Even the Animals

We should never brush aside the Midrash as mere picturesque legends.

We should never brush aside the Midrash as mere picturesque legends. There is a deep message to be found throughout midrashic material. An example: the sidra speaks of God "placing wisdom and understanding in them" ("natan HaShem chochmah ut'vunah bahemah"; Exodus 36:1). The Midrash notices that the last word seems to have a superfluous letter at the end. "In them" should be bahem, so why does the verse read bahemah?


The spelling reminds us of the Hebrew b'hemah, an animal. The Midrash therefore comments, "afilu b'hemot hayu mit'chach'min" - "even the animals can become wise." Such an animal was Bil'am's ass, which protested at the way its master was treating it. Another was Rabbi Pinchas ben Ya'ir's donkey, which refused to eat produce that had not been tithed. Isaiah (ch. 1) attests that the ox knows its master and the ass knows its master's home.


The sages say that the animals can speak and each type of animal has its own language. Animal intelligence is not a modern discovery.