In his fourth lecture on the Steipler for Torah in Motion, professor Marc B. Shapiro says: “The Talmud says every man must teach his son a profession. The Steipler rejects this. All those passages that speak about the dignity of work and not surviving on charity, these are only stated with reference to someone who needed to make a living. One who could be supported while studying, God forbid that he should stop studying Torah.
“In other words, there is no value to work. There is no dignity to work. It’s something you do if you can’t be supported by someone else.”
“That’s why the haredi world is closed to any kind of trade schools and vocational training. It has been open the last few years, but this has been done in opposition to haredi leadership. The masses have been demanding it.
“You’ll see in 30 years that this will be standard in the haredi world and this will be the new da’as Torah. When Agudath Yisrael writes a new history, they’ll write how the gadolim recognized the necessity of earning a living and therefore they were at the forefront of establishing these schools.
“Just like 30 years from now, no one is going to believe us when we tell them that there were great rabbis who covered up sex abuses and shuffled them from school to school and didn’t believe you have to report this to the police. They’ll be able to read the Agudah history books that talk about how the gadolim were in the forefront. They saw this sexual abuse from the beginning. They saw how dangerous it was. They were at the forefront of insuring that all these people were removed from the yeshivas so they couldn’t harm the children. That will be the da’as Torah in 50 years. That will be Agudah history in 50 years. They won’t tell their readers that it was the masses who revolted against their rabbinic leaders and forced this issue.”
“Haredism as an ideology and a political force, it’s the Steipler [who was most influential].”
Rav Shach simply continued the work of the Steipler.
