Shabbat and the Engineering Profession

The following is a recently revised version of a Shabbat talk given in shul by our member Professor George Moschytz on 14 July 2018. Though George and his wife Brenda (a former President of our Women’s League) are not known to most of our newer and (dare we say it, younger) members of Beit Knesset Hanassi, they are part of the history of our shul and, as George’s talk reveals, part of the history of Israel itself. This is what he has to say.

I was asked to say something about the Faculty of Engineering at Bar Ilan University (to fill out the time until lunch is ready downstairs). This is quite a challenge, since engineering is hardly a subject for a Shabbat drasha. But I don't like turning down a challenge—which is why, incidentally, I foolishly accepted to take on the Founding of the Bar Ilan Engineering Faculty 18 [now 26] years ago. This ended up being the biggest challenge of my entire career – so, again, probably foolishly, I also accepted this challenge.

One might envisage a loose connection between Shabbat and Engineering. It could be to quote Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch, on his interpretation of melacha and creative activity. He takes melacha to be a creative activity, which must stop on Shabbat, just as Hashem stopped creating on the seventh day. This, in turn is related to the principle used often by Rav J.B. Soloveitchick, of man being required to imitate Hashem, or 'imitatio dei'.

So I could have tried to somehow develop analogies between engineering, which is a supremely creative activity, and Shabbat – but it’s a bit of a stretch, and I am not going to do so. Besides, plenty has been said and written about Creative Activity, melacha and Shabbat, for example, in the excellent book The Sabbath by Dayan Grunfeld, which I am sure is well known to most of the British here.  So I am not going to talk about Creativity, Shabbat melacha and Engineering — although it does sound like an interesting title. I could also talk about how technology has eased restrictions on Shabbat, such as the Shabbat clock, the Shabbat elevator, the motor-driven wheel-chair, or that incredible invention, the Shabbat Platte. But I’ll leave that topic for another time…

So, what I am going to talk about instead is Shabbat and the Engineering Profession, because Shabbat has indirectly had a profound impact on the engineering profession in the Shabbat- observing world.

What then is this connection between Shabbat and the Engineering Profession? Let me begin with some personal experiences.

 When I was in high school, mathematics was my favorite subject, but my maths teacher warned me that the profession of the mathematician was a hard one in terms of finding a job, and that I should study electrical engineering instead. I came home and informed my parents that that was what I was going to do, and they did not object—since neither they, nor I, had the faintest idea what engineering was all about. Nor were we cognizant of the fact that, in many circles, engineering was not considered a profession for a nice Jewish boy—and for good reason.

The fact is that, back then, the engineer was invariably doomed to being employed, rather than independent—independent like in my father's generation: Of the four brothers, one, my father, was a medical doctor, one a surgeon, one a lawyer, and the fourth an independent pharmacist—all nice independent Jewish professions. At least after completing their studies, no problems were anticipated for a Shabbat-observing professional Jew.

 I'm sure I need not tell you, at least those of you who grew up outside Israel, about being employed in the fifties and sixties in the non-Jewish world—with all the complicating ramifications of Shabbat, Yom Tov, early winter Erev Shabbat, and so on. I am going to spare you all the many problems that I had in getting my engineering education and the numerous times it was literally in jeopardy.

 However, I will treat you to just a few of the more memorable examples.

The final matriculation exam of the private high school in Davos where we lived (the Swiss Alpine Middle School, Davos, or SAMD) was, as always, to take place in the fall. To my relief it first looked as though all the exams could slip through the Chagim except, to my horror, the written math exam which fell on Simchat Torah, a festival no one there had ever heard of! This was particularly embarrassing because we were only 14 students in the class and I happened to be very good at math. This mattered because our alpine school had finally received approval to conduct the Federal Matriculation Exam in Davos, instead of the students having to travel to the capital, Berne, to take the federal exam there. The school headmaster and teachers were very nervous, especially because officials from Berne were to be sent to the SAMD to see whether the school met the required high standards for the federal instead of the previously accepted cantonal examination.

This was an important and long sought after opportunity for the SAMD, and math was a subject that counted heavily. I told them that I would be unable to take the exam on the specified day because it was a Jewish Holiday, Simchat Torah. Rector and math teacher were beside themselves. ‘Find a Rabbi to get a dispensation for goodness’ sake’. I could not help them. I finally told them that the only way out for me was to take the exam the next year and hope for the best. They realized that I was serious. Finally, the math teacher said: ‘what if I ask you the questions at the blackboard, and I write your oral answer on the board?’ I said that I would have to ask my rabbi. I came home and asked my father, and he told me to go ahead. The exam was very embarrassing. I can only imagine what the Bernese delegation thought or said, but my matriculation was save [At the federal ETH university, the end-of- year exams were inevitably also on the Chagim, but the school was accommodating enough to ask for a letter naming the dates of the Jewish holidays and putting us all in one group.]

Having got through the matriculation, I had to find a place in industry to do the obligatory nine-month industrial ‘Stage’ before beginning my studies at the ETH in Zurich. We were expected to find an opening from a list of acceptable companies from the university. No one would take me when they heard that I do not work on Saturdays. ‘What would the (regular) apprentices with whom I would work—for no pay— say?’ Finally, after looking for a week in Zurich, and when it once again looked hopeless, I found one employer who had just been to the newly created State of Israel, was impressed, and saved my engineering career.

But it did not end there. One event stood out during the pre-engineering stage for which I was finally accepted in spite of not working on Saturdays. An event that has stayed with me to this very day. I was working in my blue overalls and grubby hands in the factory hall when I was told that the CEO of the company wanted to see me. My heart sank. I was 19 years old, a temporary apprentice in the company, so what could possibly have gone wrong? We reached the uppermost floor and the large heavily carpeted, beautifully furnished office of the CEO. The secretary left me, dressed in my working clothes, and I waited nervously wondering what on earth was going to happen next. After a little while a tall, grey-haired gentleman entered the room and asked me to sit down. It turned out that the gentleman had heard that I was an orthodox Jew who does not work on the Sabbath. He had never met an orthodox Jew he said, and being a devout Christian, he had always wondered what role his ‘Savior’ played in our religion? This, he felt, was his lucky chance to find out.

I was caught entirely off guard. I considered myself an orthodox Jew but, at nineteen years old, not exactly a learned one, nor one who had ever discussed my religion with a gentile. In our exile from Germany, in Abingdon UK, and Davos in Switzerland, we had always avoided such discussions, or perhaps they simply never came up for debate. And yet, for me the most extraordinary feature of this encounter was that any Jew, learned or not, orthodox, conservative, reform, liberal or whatever, is bound to answer the following crucial question more or less in the same way. ‘What does the Christian Savior mean to a Jew?’ The answer, as politely as possible, is: ‘Nothing!’

I was in this kind but frustrated gentleman’s office for over three hours! I walked out of his office, perspiring. We went through the hierarchy of possible ‘saviors’ such as Saint, Divine Offspring, King, Prophet, and so on, but I could not help him. None of them fit the image that this CEO was looking for. I could go no further than to say that for us he was a well-meaning, but misguided (expressed more gently) Jew. I was partly embarrassed, and partly regretful that I could not ease this good man’s anguish. For yes, there was anguish in his ‘pleading’ for recognition of his Savior.

As I left the CEO’s office, I realized that what I had just experienced was a genteel and respectful version of the Inquisition, and of all the other pogroms, and outbreaks of hatred and resentment of this ‘Am k'shei oref’ (stiff necked people) that has infuriated the world ever since our being selected as the Chosen People at Sinai. I also recognized the wisdom of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who in his classical essay ‘Confrontation’ (Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought, 1964 volume 6, #2) advises us to be involved in all matters of social improvement and benefits to mankind, but to stay away from any discussions on religion, because they are useless and lead absolutely nowhere. After I left the office of the CEO, I never saw or heard of this man ever again.

Even when, having completed my studies and started my ten years at AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, not long after they began to hire Jews at all, and Shabbat was no longer a working day —I was still considered a pre-historic relic when I told them that I am an orthodox Jew and need more than ten working days' vacation (ten being the rule) because of the Chagim—all of which in the Galut add up to 13 days. (They had never heard of Shavuot or Sukkot!)  At the time there were already plenty of Jewish engineers and scientists at Bell Labs. However at least at Holmel, New Jersey, where I worked—with over 4,000 employees beside myself— I believe there was not a single dati Jew.

Not surprisingly the ‘Shabbat problem’ did not stop there. A year or so after joining Bell Labs I was told that I was being considered for promotion but that it had come to the director’s and higher up’s attention that I do not work on Saturdays, our Sabbath. So I was asked, as a leader of a group, ‘what would I do in an emergency taking place on a Saturday?’ Since we did not work on Saturdays, his question surprised me, nor could I imagine what kind of emergency we could possibly encounter in this research establishment. I answered that it would depend on what the emergency was. The unlikely answer was that if President Johnson, who was from Texas, needed a telephone line immediately from the White House to Texas, they would send the CEO of AT&T, Fred Kappel, climbing up a telephone pole to get the line immediately installed. I answered politely that this would not count as an emergency on the Sabbath, but that I would be available right after the Sabbath to do whatever was needed of me, adding (as usual when this type of question came up) that instead of Saturday, I could pitch in on Sundays, Christmas, or any other time, as required, and that the only likely emergency could be that of a life and death situation, in which case my restrictions would be loosened up according to the severity of the situation. It seemed to me that the department head, a very kind and well-meaning boss, who identified with his Jewish heritage (they belonged to the local Conservative community) was clearly put into this rather awkward situation by someone higher up in the hierarchy, who was either sincerely worried about a fictitious emergency, or was not quite partial to the reason for my Sabbath-free restrictions. He said that he would have to relay my answer up the line and would get back to me. I felt, and gently insinuated, that the problem was theirs to solve, not mine. By now the whole group was, in fact, working for me already and, to keep the project going, they would almost have to make me their supervisor which, in practice, I already was. Several days later, without coming back to me, the notice of my promotion to supervisor was posted on the central notice board in the elevator tower.

Nevertheless, my Shabbat restriction did once cause an embarrassing situation for me, and it was the result of an ‘emergency’ of sorts. Towards the end of every year, each supervisor, each department head, and so on up the line, had to ‘rate’ the performance of the employees working under him (still no ‘her’). This rating, which spared no one, would determine the salary raise that each employee would receive at the end of the year. The rating was a committee effort, in our case with our department head, and the three supervisors working under him, which included me., One year, due to unusual circumstances, our rating session had not taken place during normal working hours and had to be conducted out of hours, i.e., on a Saturday! I explained that there was no way that I could come in for the rating session on a Saturday. Bell Labs was a huge enterprise that operated under strict, inflexible rules, and the rating lists had to be reported to the personnel office at latest by the coming Monday. Since I had no choice but to make clear that the rating session could not be considered an emergency for which I could violate the Sabbath, we had no alternative but to meet at the Labs on the following Sunday. Everyone, including one devout Catholic, were equally loth to come in to work on a Sunday—but I could leave them no other choice. They all gamely came in on Sunday, showing no hint of resentment or anger towards my Sabbath rules, but I felt terrible! It was this experience that made me realize the legitimate limits of my working at Bell Labs. I was determined that, if I was ever offered the next promotion, which some years later I was, I would have to decline. I realized that there really were ‘emergencies’ that could come up, and that in general they would in no way qualify transgressing Shabbat. So, I resolved that in future, the only fair decision on my part would be to never get into such a situation again, and to turn down any promotion that may be offered to me.

I could give you many more examples in my career, but now I want to get to the Engineering Faculty of Bar-Ilan University which opened only in 2001.

 But why only in 2001 when the Technion, Tel-Aviv, and Ben Gurion had Engineering Faculties long before? And why is there no engineering at Yeshiva University to this day? The students take the maths and physics courses at YU, and the engineering courses at Columbia. The answer is: all for the same reasons!

When the founders of Bar-Ian University, Prof. Pinchas Churgin and other leading American Mizrachi leaders, founded Bar-Ilan University in 1950 to 'establish a university that combines Jewish values and academic excellence', engineering was not one of the disciplines they even considered. Again, this was for good reason, because Shabbat-and Yom-Tov-observance and the engineering profession seemed a contradiction; Shabbat observance would be impossible. The engineering profession was considered too risky and difficult to promote on a large scale, because the engineering graduate would not find Shabbat-free employment. It took over fifty years after its beginning—not until 2001— till Bar-Ilan asked me to start the Engineering program. And by the way, before I go on, and not necessarily related to Shabbat, engineering was certainly not considered a profession for a girl! Jewish or not! In my semester at the ETH in Zurich there was not a single female student, nor a single female faculty member!

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How things have changed!

The apprehension and reluctance with regard to the engineering profession, in the Shomer-Shabbat community, is entirely out of place today—obviously in Israel, but even in the Galut.

Clearly, being employed as an engineer is no problem in Israel, and ever less, also in the non-Jewish world. (Many years after I had left Bell Labs, the president of Bell Labs wore a Kippa). Furthermore, the independent self-employed engineer, whether in a start-up company, or simply as a consultant on his or her own, is now common. More and more dati young students, boys and girls, can be seen in the Engineering Faculties, but particularly at Bar-Ilan. Young women with kissui Rosh are working for their PhDs, and young dati mothers and fathers carry their infants in their arms as they come up to the stage to receive their Diploma. I always had to pay attention to whose female student's hand I would shake, and whose I should not.

In the academic world, Bar-Ilan University has managed to maintain its mission of combining Jewish values with academic excellence, and this includes the now well-established Bar-Ilan Engineering Faculty—with over fifty faculty members today—from one faculty member at the beginning – me! It is the only university faculty anywhere that consciously and deliberately adheres to this mission.

However, I will mention that this mission, at least for an engineering faculty, is still not without problems, and again for the same reasons. Why’s that?

My mandate was to start a high-level faculty, with, if possible, dati professors. Well, for the reasons just mentioned, that mandate was almost impossible. If there are no dati engineering students, then there will be no dati engineering professors. It is relatively easy to find shomer Shabbat mathematics, physics and chemistry faculty members (the exact sciences have somehow always been more acceptable), but almost impossible to find shomer Shabbat engineering faculty members! On confronting me with this dilemma over and over again, the Bar-Ilan president and I finally settled on the mantra, ‘those dati engineering professors will some day come from our graduate crop’. This is quite a reasonable assumption!

But getting back to the students: approximately one third of the engineering students at Bar-Ilan are dati. The percentage of female students, because of the more Jewish atmosphere than elsewhere, is, I believe, larger than anywhere else. One day a week was free of classes to enable the students to attend the Kollel or the Midrasha. [That was then; I don’t know whether this is the case today]. The emphasis on Jewish values in the engineering curriculum is maintained, for example, by the fact that the general non-engineering culture classes that are required in engineering faculties everywhere—in order to prevent engineering nerdiness— consists at Bar-Ilan of Jewish studies [Then, I don’t know whether this applies today]. In the non-Jewish universities those courses consist of liberal arts, literature, music, philosophy, and much else.

So to wrap up my Shabbat musings on the historical interplay between Shabbat and the engineering profession, the good news is that any young shomer Shabbat student, male or female, who has a half- way affinity to mathematics—this still being one of the most important litmus tests for the engineering profession— such a young dati person can have a wonderfully creative, interesting, and needless to say well-salaried, profession in today's world of hi-tech engineering.

In Israel, and abroad, as some of you may have read in the papers recently, more engineers are desperately needed everywhere – Israel is at least 10,000 short—so getting a good job after graduation is almost guaranteed.

We keep a follow-up tab on our graduate students and are very happy to find that they, our graduates, are eagerly sought in industry—and with rare exceptions find employment soon after graduation.

So to summarize: Engineering has today become a wonderful profession for a nice Jewish boy – and girl!