One of the causes of the Enlightenment was people knew that there will always be people that hide their seeking for money and sex and power through the guise of holiness. That is how the church was in those days. The Enlightenment wanted to put a stop to using religion as a means for worldly power.
There is a similar problem in the Torah world. My recommendation is to separate Torah and Money. As we know anyway, true ordination stopped during the time of the Talmud. So anyone who claims to have ordination nowadays is by definition a fraud. The only person however that I know that spoke about this was Reb Nachman. For some reason, other religious leaders never brought this up, and in fact many were part of the scam. It is not my custom to bring up Reb Nachman here because that many make him into a deity. Still, that does not detract from the good things he said.
[People do associate him with the movement that the Gra put into excommunication even though he was really his own man.]
Though I have been recommending Litvak yeshivas on this blog, I am still aware of the drawbacks. One person mentioned to me a better idea of having a "Beit Midrash,(study hall)" not a yeshiva. A Beit Midrash is what it sounds like. A "study hall" for learning Gemara. No one gets paid to learn Gemara. And no one gets thrown out if they are learning Gemara. Simple. Just the opposite of modern day yeshivas where no one is there unless they are getting paid, and it is a private club for the rosh yeshiva and his friends, No real study of Gemara is allowed. [If you don't believe me just try to learn Gemara in any yeshiva that comes to ask you for money. You will see the reality behind the fiction.]
[A word of caution about Lithuanian yeshivas I think is in order even though the great ones like Ponovitch and Brisk and Merkaz HaRav are admirable. They learn Torah well and keep it well.
There is a similar problem in the Torah world. My recommendation is to separate Torah and Money. As we know anyway, true ordination stopped during the time of the Talmud. So anyone who claims to have ordination nowadays is by definition a fraud. The only person however that I know that spoke about this was Reb Nachman. For some reason, other religious leaders never brought this up, and in fact many were part of the scam. It is not my custom to bring up Reb Nachman here because that many make him into a deity. Still, that does not detract from the good things he said.
[People do associate him with the movement that the Gra put into excommunication even though he was really his own man.]
Though I have been recommending Litvak yeshivas on this blog, I am still aware of the drawbacks. One person mentioned to me a better idea of having a "Beit Midrash,(study hall)" not a yeshiva. A Beit Midrash is what it sounds like. A "study hall" for learning Gemara. No one gets paid to learn Gemara. And no one gets thrown out if they are learning Gemara. Simple. Just the opposite of modern day yeshivas where no one is there unless they are getting paid, and it is a private club for the rosh yeshiva and his friends, No real study of Gemara is allowed. [If you don't believe me just try to learn Gemara in any yeshiva that comes to ask you for money. You will see the reality behind the fiction.]
[A word of caution about Lithuanian yeshivas I think is in order even though the great ones like Ponovitch and Brisk and Merkaz HaRav are admirable. They learn Torah well and keep it well.
