How could learning Torah have become a money making profession? I assume I am not the only one who has noticed the Mishna in Pirkei Avot about not making Torah into a shovel to dig with or an ax to chop with. In fact, my experience with most people that use Torah to make their living tend to use Torah as an ax to chop people with. It might be that what I am not seeing here is the fact that everything has its proper measure. SO we find the Kesef Mishna defending giving money to yeshivot on that very same place in the Rambam where the Rambam brings the prohibition of learning Torah in order to get charity. Maybe there is some subtle distinction that I am not seeing. Maybe there is a fine thin line that one crosses from learning Torah for its own sake and then from lack of options one is forced to depend on charity in order to continue learning -- between that and one who sets out on purpose to use Torah in order to gain a paid position/[The reason for this is any sizable population in Israel can form a political party, and no government can be formed without 61 seats in the Kneset. So to get the religious parties to join, they get offered money. And besides that there is also the automatic funds that the government gives to yeshivot. If that money would be going only to places that actually learn Torah like Ponovitch i would have no complaints, but 90% of yeshivot were made in the first place in order to get a ''ptur' [release] from serving in the army, not to learn Torah.'
My feeling about this is that somewhere a line has been crossed to make learning Torah or teaching it for the sake of making money seem legitimate. In Israel, there are political parties whose sole purpose is to get money out of the government budget. Judges get money in spite of the halacha '' כל דיין שנוטל שכר לדון בל דיניו בטילים'', ''Any judge who receives pay to judge, all of his judgements are null and void.''
Just for the sake of clarity let me admit I was part of the kollel of the Mir Yeshiva in NY for years and I probably would have been happy to continue learning Torah in the Kollel of Rav Ernster in Safed until the problem of using Torah to make money started to bother my conscious and stopped. Then for some years I went with bitachon/TRUST IN GOD--just trust in God. and that was fine for about 7 years until I fell from trust in GOD and decided to seek out a way to make a living. But I did not want the old way of using Torah for money, so went to major in Physics at Polytechnic Institute of NYU. In the meantime other things came up--like a possibility to go to Uman for Rosh Hashanah--so I ended up in Uman for years learning Gemara with my learning partner David Bronson. --eventually getting back to Israel --still doing Physics and Gemara and Rav Shach's Avi Ezri..
[I have mentioned before that I consider the herem of the Gra to be valid, and yet I do not think that Rav Nahman would be included. This I concluded after looking at the several letters of excommunication issued in Vilna. The Signature of the Gra is on the top of the second one. ]
