Rabban Gamliel ben Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi tosses a familiar bone of contention to the pack of commentators at Avot 2:2 when he teaches:
יָפֶה
תַּלְמוּד תּוֹרָה עִם דֶּֽרֶךְ אֶֽרֶץ, שֶׁיְּגִיעַת שְׁנֵיהֶם מַשְׁכַּֽחַת
עָוֹן, וְכָל תּוֹרָה שֶׁאֵין עִמָּהּ מְלָאכָה סוֹפָהּ בְּטֵלָה וְגוֹרֶֽרֶת
עָוֹן
Beautiful is the study of Torah with
derech eretz [taken here to mean some sort of day job or gainful
employment by which to support oneself], for the toil of them both causes
sin to be forgotten. Ultimately, all Torah study that is not
accompanied with work is destined to be of no worth and to cause sin.
Reading through the sages over the ages, one can identify two
camps. There are those, led by Rambam, who take this teaching at face value. Someone
who doesn’t work and expects to be supported by others is in essence a parasite
and his attitude is a chillul Hashem, a denigration of God’s name. On
this theme, at Avot 4:7 where Rabbi Zadok teaches that one should not use the
Torah as a spade to dig with, Rambam explains his position at extraordinary
length, pulling no punches. In short, such a person forfeits his life in the
World to Come—and anyone who argues otherwise has either misunderstood or
disregarded the words of the sages on this matter.
So much attention is given to the “work or not to work”
issue that the last few words are sometimes overlooked. Living off the charity
of others is said to be גוֹרֶֽרֶת עָוֹן (“goreret
avon”, something that drags sin in its wake). Why should this be the case?
After all, if Torah has the quality of being able to refine a person’s thoughts
and conduct, learning Torah to the exclusion of everything else should have the
opposite effect.
Rambam’s younger contemporary Rabbenu Yonah explains these
words thus:
Idleness leads to poverty, which
will inevitably lead to sin and many other evils. The poor man will be eager to
receive gifts, and “only one who hates gifts will live” [Mishlei 15:27]. As a
result, he will flatter others, wicked people included, in order to receive
more gifts. When the gift money runs out he will resort to theft and gambling [based
on Ketubot 58a], bringing home what he stole from the poor to ward off death by
starvation. At this desperate stage he loses all restraint and will not stop
until he has transgressed all of the mitzvot in the Torah, for one sin leads to
another [Ben Azzai, Avot 2:1] (trans. Rabbi David Sedley).
This grim picture, based on impeccable primary sources, is hard
if not impossible to reconcile with full-time learning today. Aside from the contentious
notion that anyone in full time learning can be truly described as “idle”, modern
Jewish society lives with a system that has greatly expanded since the end of
the Second World War whereby full-time Torah study is mainly paid for and
sponsored by Jewish communities themselves. Beyond the provision made by Jewish
communities for the support of this sort of Torah scholarship, most countries
today provide some sort of welfare support that covers at least the bare necessities
of the unemployed, the unemployable and the seriously dedicated Torah scholar.
Does this mean that Rabban Gamliel is wrong and that full
time Torah learning is no longer likely to cause sin? No. There are other ways
in which a person can err. Theft, refusing to repay a loan and indeed “all the
mitzvot of the Torah” are exactly that—statutory wrongs that are contained in
the Written Law. But Avot is a tractate
that is addressed to middot, the qualities of a person’s character and the way
one behaves, and this means looking beyond the Tanach, towards something more
deeply ingrained in what we are and how we feel.
When a person works to support himself or supplement his
income, he internalizes an important connection between three cardinal elements
that shape his life: time, effort and money. If he needs money, he must expend
effort and, in doing so, consume time that might be spent doing other things (in
this instance, learning Torah). By working to secure money to support himself,
he comes to appreciate the value of his effort and the cost to him in spending
that effort which could have been put to good use in his studies. This should make
his learning all the dearer to him because the time and effort put into to
working are the price he pays for doing it.
The situation is quite different where a person’s support
comes automatically from a source that is not contingent on his time and effort.
He will not have had to “buy” his learning time, and this raises the danger
that, since he has no personal commitment to raising his support, he will come
to take it for granted. In short, he is at risk of forgetting to feel grateful.
And that, in terms of one’s middot, can be called a sin.
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