Q&A: Need or Value
Need or Value
Question
What is the Rabbi’s view on studying a profession / academia / making a living?
Does the Rabbi support the extreme approaches that see no value at all in academia / manual labor / economic self-sufficiency, or the opposite approaches—that academia is necessary as a wisdom that complements Torah / that manual labor has value in the spirit of Gordon / that a person should earn a respectable living through his own efforts?
Or perhaps (as the slashes suggest) the matter is more complex? For example, should one distinguish between an exceptional young man who has been marked out as someone who will become “the next leading Torah authority,” and an ordinarily talented young man who perhaps does not find himself in full-day Talmud study, and is capable of becoming a doctor or a logician…
Sorry if it sounds like I’m already hinting between the lines that I have a preconceived opinion on the subject, but in any case I am very interested to know the Rabbi’s view, which I respect very much.
Thank you
Answer
Greetings.
It is obvious that there is value in economic self-sufficiency, as has already been discussed at length in the Talmud and by the medieval authorities (Rishonim). You do not need me or others like me for that. (On this whole issue, see the lengthy discussion and many sources in Prof. Yehuda Levy’s book, Shaarei Talmud Torah.)
But for some reason your question assumes that the value of academia is only as professional training, and it discusses whether professional training is important or not. But academia provides knowledge and tools for learning and thinking, and these have value in and of themselves.
As for the dilemma of whether to go there or remain in yeshiva, there is of course no single correct answer for everyone. But it is worth taking into account two additional considerations: someone who is very gifted for academia would do better to go there even if he is also suited to studying in yeshiva. (You assumed that if someone is suited to yeshiva, then obviously he should not go to academia.) Take an extreme case: Einstein should not have stayed in yeshiva, but should have gone into physics from the outset. That is an enormous contribution to human thought (and of course with technological and other implications as well). Academia is beneficial to Torah study itself. It opens the mind and also creates new paths of learning and thinking.