SECULAR SPECULATIONS - 496

"avoda" in modern hebrew means

both "worship" and "work"...

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The Book of Ecclesiastes has a telling statement.

It reads:

"Sweet is the sleep of a laboring man" (Ecclesiastes 5:11)

A little later, another utterance from the sage

who authored those Proverbs:

"Prepare for your work outside...And make it fit for yourself in the field;

and afterwards build your house" (Proverbs 24:27).

In Biblical Hebrew, the daily labor (maleka) and the angel of the Lord (malak),

almost like siblings, took their origins from the same root word.

A Rabbi taught:

"Flay (strip off the skin from) a carcass in the street and earn a wage and say not, " I am a great man

and such this sort of work is degrading to me".

However, physical work wasn't always respected - in the ancient world.

In fact, many cultures counted and considered it as a disdain.

The master stood and watched, monitored and supervised...

while the ploughman tilled and turned the earth upside down - Didn't he?.

Aristotle (could you imagine!) felt that "laborers, artisans, and

merchants were unfit for citizenship in Greece".

The Great Cicero opined that no gentleman

could be a tradesman, a mechanic or a laborer.

Are you critiquing the Romans, the Greek, the Persians, the Egyptians

and the Thracians - and every other civilization?

What about the civilization - the ancient civilization - you belong to?

What dignity did it - does it accord to human labor?

Is there NOT a caste-hierarchy affixed to each profession - every division of job?

Would you - an engineer, a professor, a pilot, computer analyst,

a bank manager - court friendship with a manual worker?

Commensality: in a covenanted relationship, would you eat with him...share his meal

Connubiality: in a committed bonding, would you fall for her - and marry?

How would you treat if one of your daughters or sons dared to cross

the sophisticated fences

and the high walls you have built and have guarded them religiously?

What sanctions would you impose - consciously and unconsciously..?

There is a fort - the PADMANABHAPURAM PALACE, about 50 Kilometers from Thiruvananthapuram,

close to the town of Thuckalay in Tamilnadu.

(it's one piece of property Kerala owns in Tamilnadu!).

Constructed in 1601 by the Travancore King, it is a long complex of granite construction.

Who knows, Rravivarma Kulasehara Perumal (1592 - 1609 A.D) might have

hidden in his place so much of precious metals and so many expensive jewels.

Gold ornaments and ruby-studded crowns.

However, a coin earned by manual labor is worth more than all those collections...

PEACE.

GITANJALI - BERNARD