Q&A: Religious People Who Steal
Religious People Who Steal
Question
Peace to you, my teacher and rabbi,
In several places where I worked, I saw religious employees stealing time from their employer for prayers that were clearly not authorized for them to take (for example, they clock in and go pray the morning service), and they drag out the prayer and add a lesson and so on. What is surprising is that the more devout the person is, the more he steals (lengthening the prayer, adding Psalms, studying the daily Talmud page, etc.).
1. Are you familiar with this phenomenon?
2. Do you have an idea how to look at it without getting angry and becoming religiously weakened? In the sense of: if those who accept the kingdom of Heaven and the yoke of the commandments behave this way, let my lot not be with them…
Answer
- I am aware that this phenomenon exists.
- The proper advice is to remove yourself from the category of those who hang their faith on the behavior of human beings. There are weak-minded people who determine their beliefs according to the principle that if these people and those people act this way, let my lot not be with them. But the fact that instructions take such people into account does not mean that this is indeed the proper way to make decisions. There are such people and such ways of thinking, and therefore they must be taken into account, but these are very poor ways to make decisions. For example, the Sages enacted that the priest should read the section of first-fruits aloud for the one bringing the offering because of those who did not know how to read. Should one infer from this that it is desirable to be someone who does not know how to read? Think carefully about it…
Discussion on Answer
I have always wondered about the change in thinking regarding prayer, between the generation of the Sages and our own generation.
In Berakhot 16 and in the Shulchan Arukh, section 63, it is explained that laborers may be lenient in the laws of prayer. They are exempt from prayer with a quorum and from the repetition of the prayer leader, and they may recite the Shema while atop a tree.
So true, in their time work began in the fields at dawn, and in our time it is possible to manage to pray beforehand. But what about someone who has to travel to work, or take the children to preschool?
Another point—in their time the order of priorities was this: I cannot pray, because I am working.
Today the order is reversed: I cannot work, because I need to pray / study / guard my eyes, and so on.
That is, in their time, the first assumption was that a person has to live his life and earn a livelihood, and Jewish law must adapt itself to normal life.
Today, the thinking is that a person must first fulfill the demands of the Shulchan Arukh, and only if it works out for him can he also work.
That is my feeling from my experience in the Haredi public.
Rabbi, do you agree with me?
Completely. The Haredi outlook is that life is a trial that must be endured successfully, but the focus should be on Torah. Life only interferes with that. In modern religiosity (and to some extent also in Hasidism at its origin, not as it is today), the outlook was the opposite.
And perhaps one more remark (in the name of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, who appeared to me in a dream). Because of the importance these guys attach to serving God, they make the mistake and steal. Others who do not steal are not necessarily better; rather, they simply do not attach such great importance to their values or interests. Thus, generally speaking, elderly men and women do not commit adultery, and those who do not believe do not murder because of their beliefs, and so on.