Decades ago, Wiesner left academia, embraced Orthodox Judaism, moved from the US to Israel, and took up work there as a construction laborer—believing (or so he told me) that manual labor was good for the soul.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5730

Stephen J. Wiesner (1942 – August 12, 2021)[1] was an American-Israeli research physicist, inventor and construction laborer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiesner