GEN281 Work alone makes life meaningful and blessed. The joy that comes from it is contagious. It increases the happiness of the world. To translate the ideal of cooperation with God into a life of industry in cooperation with one’s fellow men has been one of the chief ethical goals of Judaism.  The conception of man as co-worker of God furnishes the key to the Jewish attitude toward labor.  Work is the vocation of man, the chief instrumentality of his joy and salvation. It is not only the joy of labor but its pain that is sounded in Jewish literature. The second chapter of Genesis reechoes the cry of the weary that labor is a curse.  The tillers of the soil in southern Palestine, who struggled against a desert influence and against thorns and thistles that overcrowded their arid land, naturally felt the bitterness of their toil. The Biblical author, voicing their sentiments, explained labor as the consequence of Divine displeasure. Due to a grave sin on the part of the father of the human race, the soil was cursed and man was made to wrest bread from it through the sweat of his brow. COHON 174-5