Q:
What purpose or what mitzvah can a teacher in the yeshiva tell his students they are fulfilling when they learn reading, writing and arithmetic? How can I justify it to boys who feel that Torah is the only thing in the world?
A:
We come to a very important subject here, יפה תלמוד תורה עם דרך ארץ – learning Torah is very good if you’re making a living too (Avos 2:2). You must be able to support your family. If you don’t graduate from the yeshivah high school then you are a cripple.
Not many people are going to become roshei yeshivahs. Let’s face it—you’ll have to make a living. And if they’re not prepared many times they fall into temptations to do dishonest things too and they get into trouble. Or they’re so poor that they need people to collect money for them. Or sometimes they can’t support their wives and their family breaks up, chas v’shalom. And therefore it’s good common sense since there is such a law that the children must have a secular education, let’s utilize it.
When Moshiach will come, things will be different. But right now he didn’t come yet, so let’s train our boys and our girls, they should be able to read and write and do arithmetic. It’s good for a business too, by the way. And they need these things in order to adjust to the problems of living. And therefore by all means it’s a mitzvah to teach children the things that’ll prepare them.
The Gemara says לעולם ילמד אדם את בנו אומנות – a father should teach his son some livelihood (Kiddushin 82b). Now, today it’s not so popular among boys. To learn a livelihood? Everyone thinks he’ll become a rosh yeshivah, a gadol batorah. But the Gemara says that.
And therefore it’s a very important thing at least to start out—maybe later in life you’ll see when you’re nineteen or twenty that you’re becoming an iluy and a future rosh yeshivah, then you won’t need these things. But in most cases you will. And in order to fulfill your promise when you married your wife, in the kesubah that was signed by witnesses at your command—you promised to support your wife—therefore it’s important to be able to read and write and do arithmetic.
(October 1995)
