Love Your Work? Like You Love Your Spouse?
Career Advice you won't hear in Yeshiva
Last Shabbat I was asked to speak to a group of college students here in Israel for summer internships. They were part of SIJ @ TVA, a JLIC Israel program. Here's what I shared with them about career success.
Tough Transition
I was in Yeshiva for 11 years. Then it came time to transition to the workforce. I'd been taught that Torah is a guide to life, that it's supposed to be the core value system behind our big decisions. So I asked myself: how do I actually use that framework to figure out what kind of job to look for?
The Necessary Evil
The Mesillas Yesharim quotes a Mishna in Avos: הוי ממעט בעסק, ועסוק בתורה, minimize your work and occupy yourself with Torah. The Mishna frames work as a necessary evil. Life is about spiritual pursuits, and work is just how you fund that. So the calculation is simple: minimize work, maximize everything else.
Around that time I discovered Tim Ferriss. He wrote The Four Hour Workweek, built on the idea that life is about enjoying yourself, and that you should shrink your work down to a few hours a week so you can spend the rest of your time on the stuff you actually love. Karate, travel, surfing, whatever it is for you.
I found this to be an interesting parallel: minimize work, maximize other things.
But it didn't match the world I was looking at. Almost everyone I know works full long and hard to be successful. So I went looking for a different lens.
Love Your Work
Turns out there's another Mishna in Avos: אהוב את המלאכה , love your work. Which is a very different starting point.
And I found are a few additional in Chazal that connect work not just to love, but specifically to the love of marriage.
The Gemara in Kiddushin says a father is obligated to teach his son a trade. The source for that obligation is a pasuk in Koheles:ראה חיים עם אשה אשר אהבת see life with the woman you love. The Gemara draws the line directly: just as a father is commanded to help his child find love and get married, he's commanded to teach him a trade.
The Gemara in Brachos adds another layer. On the pasuk את הכל עשה יפה בעתו, Hashem made everything beautiful in its time, the Gemara says this teaches that Hashem makes every person's own trade look beautiful to them. Rashi explains why: this way the world is never missing a trade, because someone out there is attracted to doing it. Hashem built a world where people are drawn to different things, and that's exactly how careers work too.
Obviously there's a limit here. I'm not telling anyone to go home and inform their spouse they're having an emotional affair with their career. That's not the point. But there are real lessons from the framework of marriage that apply directly to how we think about work.
Lesson One: Don't Compare
Love is private and intimate, which is exactly why comparing your marriage to someone else's is so dangerous.
Under the chuppah we bless a bride and groom that they should be as joyful as Adam and Eve in Gan Eden. כשמחך יצירך בגן עדן מקדם
Adam and Eve had nobody to compare themselves to. There was nobody else. That's the model.
Work is the same. Success looks completely different from person to person. One person wants to make as much money as possible and is willing to grind long hours for it. Another is happy with a more modest salary in exchange for time with family. Someone gets a thrill from flying to conferences around the world. Someone else lives for being home to kiss their kids goodnight.
You need your own definition of success. Be super careful with LinkedIn. That stuff clouds your judgment fast if you let other people's definition of success become your own.
Lesson Two: Ups and Downs
Marriage has highs and lows. It's built into the halacha itself. Chazal describe part of the beauty of marriage as coming from the cycle of distance and closeness, of nida and mikvah. That's not a flaw in the marriage.
Work is the same. Not every day is rosy. Frustration and stress are part of a long-term process of growing into your work and appreciating it. A hard day doesn't mean something is wrong with the relationship. It can be a completely normal part of a healthy one.
Lesson Three: Service of a Higher Purpose
A home and a marriage exist in service of something bigger. We are soldiers in Hashem's army, meant to take our skills and use them for Him, for the Jewish people, for yishuv ha'olam.
Work is the same. It's one part of a life in service of Ribono Shel Olam. When you remember that your job is important but not the whole picture, you get a very different kind of perspective on what you're doing all day.
Where This Took Me
I took an unusual career path. Years in kollel, a move to the Negev, a non-profit job that isn't full time. None of that looks like the standard track, and it's built entirely on my own definition of success, not anyone else's.
I've shared this before, but a recruiter once laughed in my face when I told her I wanted to live in the Negev, have a morning Seder, and feed my family.
I've had plenty of ups and downs along the way. Bad days, bad weeks. That's normal.
And I keep coming back to trying to see myself as an eved of Hashem first, with everything else, including the job, fitting into that picture. It's something I'm still working on, every day.