Every holiday has its book. The newest of Israel’s festivals has the newest scroll – the Declaration of Independence. We would do well to read it and seek to deepen our understanding of its words. About a decade ago, the poet of friendship and independence Haim Gouri (1923–2018) wrote: “I hear the Declaration of Independence crying out, and its voice goes unheard.” Let us open our hearts to the cry of this scroll, and try to shed light on a pair of words from it.
that the Declaration of Independence seems to cry out, yet its voice remains unheard. Let us open our hearts to the cry of this scroll, and try to shed light on a pair of words from it.
Honest toil in our national homeland
In the seventh paragraph of the Declaration it is written: “Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.”
Here we find Israel’s first invocation of dignity and freedom as fundamental rights – but what is amal yesharim, “honest toil,” and where does the phrase come from? It turns out that the expression was coined within the Declaration itself, apparently by Moshe Sharett. The word amal (toil, labor), in its various inflections, appears dozens of times in the Bible – half of them in Ecclesiastes — and the concept of honesty appears already in the Torah; but the pairing amal yesharim (“honest toil”) was coined specifically for the Declaration of Independence, and is apparently a translation from the English.
“What profit has a man of all his labor wherein he labors under the sun?” Ecclesiastes asks painfully at the opening of the book. In the Bible, amal signifies grueling work whose purpose is unclear and which is an inescapable necessity. The rabbis of the Talmud revolutionized the meaning of the word. Interpreting the words “in all his labor,” the Midrash says: “It is his own toil that is ineffective, but the toil of Torah is effective.” (Vayikra Rabbah 28:1). In Pirkei Avot it is said: “In Torah shall you labor. If you do this, ‘Happy shall you be and it shall be good for you’ (Psalms 128:2): ‘Happy shall you be’ in this world, ‘and it shall be good for you’ in the world to come.” (Mishnah, Avot 6:4).
Amal in the Declaration of Independence takes us back to the basic meaning of the word – “work” – but transforms it from a burden and hardship into a right. The Declaration takes amal as “labor” from the Bible, and amal as a right from the rabbis, and merges them together.
The labor of those building the homeland
As mentioned, the Declaration does not stop at the word amal alone – it speaks of amal yesharim, the honest toil. Perhaps the Declaration’s authors wished to distinguish between the labor of those building the homeland and the labor of exile. In the diaspora, Jews were forced into money-changing, moneylending, and trade; whereas honest toil hints at pioneering labor – working the land, construction, defense, and other forms of productive work.
The phrase also evokes a deep talmudic idea. Rava says that when a person stands before the heavenly court at the end of their days, they are asked a series of questions that begin with a surprising one: “Did you conduct business faithfully?” (Shabbat 31a). This is how the judgment of everything a person did in their life begins. Commenting on the verse “and do what is right in His eyes,” the Mekhilta on Exodus teaches that this refers to honest commerce – one who deals faithfully and wins the trust of others is considered by Scripture to have fulfilled the Torah in its entirety.
This idea is given practical shape by the Aruch HaShulchan – the important legal code of Rabbi Epstein from the late XIX century – which explains that honest business conduct means that one’s word should be reliable in both affirmation and refusal, that one should never misrepresent the cost or quality of goods, and that all dealings should be carried out with calm and respect – without raising one’s voice, insulting others, or losing one’s temper.
Calm, respectful, productive, and decent
It seems that the phrase “honest toil” contains within it the principle of conducting business faithfully. This is honest toil – calm, respectful, productive, and decent. And such labor, the Declaration insists, is not a privilege but a right. Folded into these two words is a dream: of work that sees a person as a person, neither alienating nor alienated.
The idea of dignity and the idea of freedom each received their own Basic Law, but the legislators transformed honest toil into the Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation. Professor Yoram Shachar lamented this. In his view, the conversion of honest toil in the Declaration into “freedom of occupation” in the Basic Laws reflects a troubling social process we have undergone. The value of profit has replaced the dream of honest labor, and we now simply protect every person’s right to make money by any legal means they see fit. Perhaps one of the Declaration’s cries to us is to once again see in honest toil one of the aspirations and rights of our people.
Happy Independence Day.
The brief quotation from Haim Gouri and the article by Yoram Shachar were published in the book “The Declaration of Independence with an Israeli Talmudic Commentary,” edited by Israel Dov Elboim, published jointly by Yedioth Books, the Israel Democracy Institute, and the Bina Center.
This article was originally published in Hebrew.
Main Photo: Moshe Sharet signing the Declaration of Independence\ Wikipedia
