Library of Congress specialist Ann Brener, left, shows incoming White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Eric Lander and his family a 500-year-old copy of the Pirkei Avot shortly before he used it during his swearing-in ceremony on June 2. The 13-page volume, a subset of the Mishnah that focuses on ethics, contains an expression important to Lander, “It’s not required that you compete the work, but neither may you refrain from it.”  Lander and Brener said that using a 500-year-old Pirkei Avot to take the oath of office may serve as a reminder of an early collaboration between religion, technology and science: using a printing press to reproduce sacred texts.                                                                                                 Photo courtesy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy