Jeanette Friedman

WORK IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD–& Hillary has nothing to do with it

Jun 06

Jeanette Friedmaneducation, local stories/community, people No Comments

First came this question on the halacha discussion list I’ve belonged to for eons.

>Would anyone like to comment (based on personal experience) on the
>ever-increasing trend of boys getting married who do not have any plans
>for parnasa, and are told by their rebbeim that they should just have
>bitachon and everything will work out?

and then my response–amazingly, for the first time in months, a post was actually posted!!!!

From: FriedmanJ@aol.com
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2006 07:04:04 EDT
Subject: Re: No Plans for Parnasa

When Hillel said go and study, he didn’t mean kvetch a benkel [sit on a bench in a Kollel--which is a "graduate school for Talmudic scholars] and become a welfare case. He meant quite the opposite. [Hillel responded to the Gentile who asked him to teach him the entire Torah as he stood on one leg--"Don't do anything to anyone you don't want them to do to you. Now go and study"]

No Plans for Paranassa sounds like a great name for R’ Shapiro’s new book, which excoriates going to work for a living.

In any event, one month after my first marriage, suddenly the person I was married to decided to quit working and sit and learn because his rosh yeshiva told him to. Having gotten pregnant on my wedding night, with no income to speak of, he decided I needed to go to work or sponge off my father, which he immediately proceeded to do (along with beating me…the beatings began during Sheva Brachot).

All I can say about this new trend of never going to work, and sitting and “learning” all day is that it has absolutely nothing to do with being a Torah Jew, it is the most misguided way of living anyone ever thought up, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that any American authorities who determine whether or not families get welfare money should 100% not grant those men a nickel.

As for the rabbis who demand that people not go to work, someone should straighten them out as well. We all know and have discussed the problems that this causes for men who aren’t “learners” and there have been enough suicides and people who have left Judaism altogether to prove it.