If a man has to work at making a living, where does a Kollel life come in?
A:
I’ll answer you like this: There was once a man here in the shul who told me that he’d like to quit work and become a Kollel man. Now, I’m an old hand when it comes to these types of things, so I told him, “What you really mean is the first half. That’s what you’d like to do.” He wants to quit work, period.
So I said to him, “You keep on working. Don’t quit just yet. And we’ll do it like this: Every Sunday become a Kollel man! Every Sunday morning pack a lunch and go off to the Kollel. And tell your wife that you won’t home until 7 o’clock at night.” And I told him, “If you’ll do this faithfully every week, if every Sunday you’ll be a Kollel man, then we’ll talk about Monday too. Well, that’s all it was. It didn’t go any further than that.
TAPE # 204 (February 1978)