Those of us who work with computers are familiar with the “copy and paste” function which enables us to select a passage of text from a document copy that passage and simply click the copied text into another file. Now the “copy and paste” method has found a social application and it’s being used in a smear campaign against the Torah-learning community.
It began this way: a reporter covering the university students’ riots (claiming inequality because married kollel students with three children are granted an extra $300 a month) picked up few lines from the Rambam’s Yad Chazakah which suited his agenda. The passage is familiar to every student of Torah:
“Whoever decides that he will engage in Torah study and do no work but will live on tzedakah is desecrating the name of Hashem putting the Torah to shame snuffing out the light of religious observance causing evil to himself and reducing life in the World to Come…” (Hilchos Talmud Torah).
What a find for the enemies of Torah study a heaven-sent gem! [I first heard the citation used in this way by a speaker on a panel that we shared. It was painful to hear this man a religious fellow speak with such animosity about Torah scholars who according to his understanding of the Rambam are desecrating the name of Hashem.]
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