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An Historical View of Operator Fatigue
Published in Gerald Matthews, Paula A. Desmond, Catherine Neubauer, P.A. Hancock, The Handbook of Operator Fatigue, 2017
The concepts of work, stress, rest, and recovery are present in our earliest religious writings. Even Genesis states that on the seventh day, God “rested from all his work,” though we also learn that God is tireless and only chooses to rest. Exodus indicates that the Sabbath was to be set aside, even today, as a period during which people rest instead of labor. Ancoli-Israel (2001) noted that: “Although we think we have discovered many new features about sleep disorders, much of what we know today was suggested thousands of years ago and documented in the Bible and the Talmud.”
‘Remember the Sabbath’: a history of technological decisions and innovation in Orthodox Jewish communities
Published in History and Technology, 2020
For Lieberman and Lew, refraining from using cars and telephones on Shabbat reflected a directive to guard that day as free from work. Starting from Genesis 2: 3, ‘God blessed the seventh day and He hallowed it’, numerous Torah verses stressed that weekly Sabbath respites represented a mandate, delineating the essence of Jewish identity. Exodus declares, ‘Six days may you work …, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord … ; you shall perform no labor, neither you, your son, your daughter, your [servants], your beast … ’. Jeremiah 17:22 elaborates, ‘Neither shall you take a burden out of your houses on the Sabbath’. Later verses re-emphasize the ‘everlasting covenant’ to obey a ‘Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord’, mandating death penalties for violators.11
Socialized occupational medicine in Israel: past, present, and future
Published in Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 2020
Lilah Rinsky-Halivni, Chaim Cohen, Shlomo Moshe, Eric Amster
The inspiration for modern labor legislation in the state of Israel is drawn from the Ancient Hebrew law, with its sources in Biblical texts dating back over 3,000 years.7 One example for a social law based on Jewish sources is the Sabbath (Saturday) as a weekly day of complete rest, when employers and employees are equally required to avoid doing any work. Disadvantaged populations like slaves and foreign workers were included as well (Deuteronomy 5:14, Exodus 23:12). The idea of limiting work hours “until nightfall” is mentioned in the Book of Psalms and is also discussed by Jewish sages (Psalms 104:23 and Tractate Baba Metzi’ah 93b). The implementation of safety measures, such as the obligation to install a guardrail on the roof a house when constructed, stresses an individual’s responsibility to ensure the safety of people on his property, whether or not they are his workers (Deuteronomy 22:8). Jewish literature pre-dating the year 200 CE contains the story of a work accident that occurred in the Land of Israel, in which a porter was hurt because he was forced to carry too much weight. The scholars’ debate over the issue, at that time, demonstrates that employers are required to take precautions and compensate workers for damages caused as a result of an employer’s negligence. These sages also determine the maximum weight that a porter can be forced to bear and by doing so documented a 2,000 years old Threshold Limit Value (TLV) (Tosefta Baba Metzi’ah 7:10). Maimonides, a Spanish-Jewish 12th-century physician and philosopher who lived in Egypt during the Middle Ages, determined that Sisyphean labor, purely meant to occupy the worker, or tasks with no predetermined deadline, is considered precarious employment. In the 17th century, various Jewish communities set regulations on the minimum employment age for boys, which ranged from age 13 to 17. Penalties and sanctions were enacted to enforce these norms.7