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Our community in Hoboken reached a sad milestone at the beginning of December 2008. In the span of just one week, seven people from our community approached me to let me know that they had lost their jobs.

Undoubtedly, this was only a portion of the people from our community who had lost work during this financial crisis, and there have been many more job losses in our community since that time. The downturn in the economy has affected almost every family in our community and our region, whether through loss of work, diminution of income, or loss of investments.

For many of us, this is the most severe financial crisis of our lifetimes -- though some of us are old enough to remember the Great Depression that this crisis increasingly appears to resemble in various details.

The loss of work, in particular, is especially challenging for many of us considering our society's general preoccupation with professional status.

There is a minor incident in the Torah portion of Vayigash, which Jewish communities in Hudson County and around the world read on Jan. 3, that addresses what it is like to live in a society with such a preoccupation, especially at a time of financial difficulty.

This is the Torah portion in which Joseph finally reveals his true identity to his brothers, announces that he forgives them for having sold him into slavery so many years prior, and invites the entire family to move down to Egypt.

Each year, my attention is drawn to a very minor episode in the Torah, toward the end of the book of Genesis (47:2-6). Joseph arranges for a delegation from his brothers to make an appearance before Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Five brothers are selected to meet with Pharaoh, and we read that during this meeting, Pharaoh asks the brothers one, and only one, question: "Mah ma'aseichem?" "What do you do?"

The brothers respond: "We are shepherds, as were our ancestors."

Pharaoh says, in effect, "Very nice. Perhaps I shall make you in charge of watching the royal flocks of sheep." And that's the end of the meeting.

Commentators of our heritage have noted that it's a little surprising that the first, and only, question that Pharaoh asks the brothers is, "Mah ma'aseichem?" "What do you do?"

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, a German rabbi from the 19th century, wrote in his Torah commentary that this interaction highlights something especially troubling about Egyptian society: It was a society in which people were prized not for who they were, but for their economic productivity. People were not valued as people, but rather as farmers, as laborers, as merchants.

This kind of dehumanization -- this focus on productivity -- is what paved the way for Egypt to become the kind of exploitative society that relied on slave labor to build the pyramids, and that became the paradigmatic example of cruel oppression in Jewish history and tradition.

Rabbi Hirsch's words are certainly very critical of Egypt as a society. Between the lines, we can see that he is critiquing our society, as well. How often does it happen that we're at a party, or some other kind of gathering, or some other context for meeting someone new, and the very first question that is asked of us is, "So, what do you do?" Or perhaps that's the first question that we ask -- because our society tells us that this is an important first question to ask.

In this society, people's careers comprise an especially large part of their personal identities. It wasn't always that way.

My guess is that if someone had asked my great-grandfather, "What do you do?" he would have had no idea what to answer. He probably would have said something like, "I provide for my wife and my children. I play with my children. I watch them grow. I give as much tzedakah as I can afford to. I try to study Torah when I can."

And I don't know if he would have thought to say that to fund all of this, sometimes he had a candy store, sometimes he had a cigar store, and sometimes he sold newspapers. These things were work -- but this was not an answer to the question "What do you do?"

For most of us, our work is not the most important facet of our identity. Probably for most of us, our work is not going to be the most important way that we will each leave our mark on the world.

When, in the past, I have unfortunately had opportunities to speak with people in our community who have been looking for work, there have been some common themes in the conversations. Obviously, there is anxiety about the money, about providing adequately for family. Even more than that, however, I have found that people focus on the emotional toll of being out of work. Many feel that since they are not being professionally productive, they are not of use to society. This sometimes has led some of them to avoid social gatherings, because they know that this is the kind of society where one of the first questions that gets asked at social gatherings is Mah ma'aseichem? "What do you do?"

I have heard similar concerns from people who are recently retired, or from moms or dads who are home full time, who report that they sometimes feel like the world values them less because they are not working at a career.

One of the fascinating things for me about this passage from the book of Genesis is that immediately before the meeting between Pharaoh and the brothers, Joseph has a little prep session for the brothers. He tells them, "Ve-hayah ki yikra lachem par'oh, ve-amar 'mah ma'aseichem.'" "When Pharaoh calls you in, he's going to ask you, 'What do you do?' -- and this is what you should tell him: 'We are breeders of livestock'."

So Joseph knew that the only question Pharaoh was going to ask was to be about their occupation. But why did Joseph need to prep his brothers? Perhaps because they knew that the answer to the question "What do you do?" really involves much more, and much beyond, one's professional life. Joseph wanted to make sure, however, that when speaking to Pharaoh, they would give the kind of answer that Pharaoh would expect and would be able to understand.

It is notable that in the Midrash, the sages of our tradition provide a different set of answers to the question, "What do you do?":

"At the Time of Judgment in the future world, everyone will be asked, 'Mah hayah melachtecha? What did you do?'

If the person answers, 'I used to feed the hungry,' they will say to that person, 'This is God's gate; you, who fed the hungry, may enter.'

If the person answers, 'I used to give water to those who were thirsty,' they will say to that person, 'This is God's gate; you, who gave water to those who were thirsty may enter.'

And similarly with those who clothed the naked, and who raised orphans, and who performed the mitzvah of tzedakah, and who performed acts of compassion and kindness." (Midrash to Psalms, 118.)

The next time someone asks us, "So, what do you do?" let us know the best way to answer.

Rabbi Scheinberg is the spiritual leader of United Synagogue of Hoboken. He can be reached at rabbi@hobokensynagogue.org.