Q:
Is it right for a man to sit in a kollel and let his wife work?
A:
The answer is, it depends where she works. If the environment is not beneficial for her, absolutely not. She should not lose her neshama for the sake of her husband’s learning.
However, if she can find a congenial place to work in, even though the pay is not that much, and they’re both willing to suffer privations for the sake of his learning, absolutely. It’s an ideal.
When a girl marries a young man who sits in the kollel and learns, you have to know that home is not an ordinary home anymore. It’s a kollel home. It’s influenced by the spirit of Torah. Every day the husband goes off to the kollel and the wife goes off to work.
Now, if she goes off to work and he sits in the house reading a newspaper and goes off to kollel at 10:30, I don’t approve of that. When she goes to work, he has to be in the kollel already. He too has to work a full day. He can’t sit for an hour at lunch. Or you find him standing outside the yeshiva in the morning; no he can’t do that. His wife is working – he should work too.
But if he is really working at learning and she is working making a parnassa, it’s a beautiful beginning. And eventually, when he’ll take over the earning of the livelihood, the family will be established on a kollel basis. The children will already be established as kollel children. The children have the attitude of kollel life and that’ll remain all their lives even though he goes into business later with some profession.
TAPE # 630
