Those of us who work with computers are familiar with the “copy and paste” function which enables us to select a passage of text from a document copy that passage and simply click the copied text into another file. Now the “copy and paste” method has found a social application and it’s being used in a smear campaign against the Torah-learning community.

It began this way: a reporter covering the university students’ riots (claiming inequality because married kollel students with three children are granted an extra $300 a month) picked up few lines from the Rambam’s Yad Chazakah which suited his agenda. The passage is familiar to every student of Torah:

“Whoever decides that he will engage in Torah study and do no work but will live on tzedakah is desecrating the name of Hashem putting the Torah to shame snuffing out the light of religious observance causing evil to himself and reducing life in the World to Come…” (Hilchos Talmud Torah).

What a find for the enemies of Torah study a heaven-sent gem! [I first heard the citation used in this way by a speaker on a panel that we shared. It was painful to hear this man a religious fellow speak with such animosity about Torah scholars who according to his understanding of the Rambam are desecrating the name of Hashem.]

From there the “copy and paste” technique started rolling. These lines from the Rambam suddenly became popular among every denizen of the street among people who aren’t even familiar with halachah or with the Rambam’s works and who in fact are barely familiar with his name; at most they may associate it with a hospital in Haifa or New York. (This is no joke by the way. Forgive me for straying from the topic but when the government decided to mint a shekel coin bearing the Rambam’s image a journalist went out to the streets of Tel Aviv to ask passersby if they knew who the Rambam was. Here are a few of the answers he received: a woman from Ramat Gan said “He lived in the fourteenth century he had a doctrine about natural foods and my father likes him a lot.” Another passerby said “I know he gave a name to things here in Israel. There are streets named after him and a hospital so he must have been someone important. But he was a religious man I think so why did they name a hospital after him?”)

Since the uproar of the “Avreichim Law” by which a small monthly stipend from the public coffers is provided to a minority of qualifying kollel families in Israel this argument has appeared in nearly every article written against full-time learners. Suddenly these secular journalists have become Rambam scholars and no doubt when they copy the passage each one from a fellow journalist and paste it into their own diatribes they feel proud that they have struck out at the Torah scholars with their own ammunition — the halachah.

Do the new “Rambamists” really think that Torah scholars never heard of this halachah until some journalist came along and revealed it to them? If so then why don’t they follow this teaching and why haven’t they followed it in any generation including the Rambam’s own generation? What did the Rambam mean? Could it be that these Torah scholars who pore over the Rambam’s works and carry out his rulings within the framework of halachah are suddenly willing in this one case to ignore his ruling for a pittance of 1 040 shekels per month on pain of being considered mechalelei Hashem in the eyes of the Torah and in the eyes of the secular community “parasites” and “extortionists”? For $300 a month is it worth it? If the sentence from the Rambam constitutes the halachah then why doesn’t the chareidi community comply with by it?

Let’s examine another passage also from the Rambam:

“And not only the tribe of Levi but every single man out of all the world’s people who has come to desire and understand why he should separate himself from others to stand before Hashem to serve and worship Him and to know Him and following the straight path as G-d created him he casts off from his shoulders the burden of the countless reckonings that men pursue — that man is the holiest of holies and Hashem will be his provider in this world and for all eternity and he will merit to receive in this world his provisions just as they are granted to the  Kohanim and the Leviim merit.”

How do those who are so eager to quote the first Rambam integrate this passage where the Rambam equates all dedicated Torah scholars to the tribe of Levi who lived on grants and allowances gained from the mandatory donations and tithes given by the rest of the nation as required by Torah law? And this enabled the entire Jewish Nation to have a part in the learning and teaching of Torah the primary role of the Levites. Here we have a glaring contradiction between a statement by the Rambam that has become a favorite weapon in the war against Torah and another statement by the Rambam comparing the every single Torah learner to the tribe of Levi.

So how do we resolve this kushya?

This is not the forum for an evaluation of generations upon generations of scholarship that has dealt with this seeming contradiction – the Rambam is not a new discovery unearthed by some maverick journalist. [Perhaps the first Rambam is talking about a person who is planning on sitting back and assuming the community will take care of him without a communal consensus? Is this the same thing as a community who wishes to support its Torah scholars for their own spiritual benefit and elevation?]

Anyone involved in halachic rulings can attest to the following: a halachic ruling for generations is not determined by the Rambam alone. He has partners in the creation of the psak and they are the Rif and the Rosh (any child in our community can tell you who they are). In fact the Rambam is refuted by many other commentaries including the Beis Yosef in his commentary Kesef Mishnah. Whatever the resolution the repeated use of the first citation time and again by attackers of Torah scholars merely shows their lack of comprehension of  basic Jewish texts and their lack of qualification to discuss them.

Food for Thought

A man who does not have an hour for himself every day

is not a man

(Rebbe Nachman of Breslov)