How much should a person work? Rabbi Avigdor Goldberger recently wrote a piece on this question. The substack readers might not realize that Rabbi Goldberger is also a career coach, among his many other projects. This was the main topic of our conversation on Shtark Tank a few years back. His post is excellent, and I wanted to add a few thoughts of my own.
The Chofetz Chaim Story
Rabbi Goldberger opens with the story of the Chofetz Chaim, who sat in his store only until he had earned what he needed for the day, then closed up and went to learn. I heard that story in yeshiva too, and it made a big impact on me. But it’s worth pulling apart a bit.
First, the person who came to Rabbi Goldberger already had a rare luxury: the opportunity to cut back on work in order to learn more. Most people don’t have that choice. They need to work to make ends meet, for job stability, for financial stability. If you’re reading this and you do have that flexibility, recognize it as a unique blessing, not something most people have or experience.
Second, as Rabbi Goldberger alludes to toward the end of his piece, the Chofetz Chaim was a generational Gadol, one of the great Torah scholars and leaders of his time. Most people are not like that.
And yet these stories get told in yeshiva, and speaking for myself, as a young guy they capture the imagination and the heart. It’s easy to think these standards are meant to be applied directly to your own life. That can be dangerous. Klal Yisrael needs Gedolim, and it also needs regular, normal baalei batim. And for the normal guys like me, thinking you can act like a gadol can be dangerous.
This is a big educational question, and is far beyond my paygrade. There is also plenty of positive value in being inspired by gedolim if done in the right way. But I can attest from personal experience that this is a tricky topic.
Third, the Chofetz Chaim pulled this off because he was the Chofetz Chaim. People flocked to his store and wanted to give him their business, and would have kept coming even if he closed early. That was baked into the business model.
Most people aren’t in that position. If I closed my store the moment I’d made enough for the day, people would stop coming, because a business needs to be reliably open. I’m not saying it’s impossible. Some people have found creative ways to structure a livelihood that doesn’t interfere with serious learning, but it’s rare, and it doesn’t come easily. That should be acknowledged. (Credit to Rabbi Yehuda Halpert for this point, from one of the most popular Shtark Tank episode ever)
There’s also the financial planning piece. Modern life generally requires saving for big future expenses: simchas, retirement, and more. The Chofetz Chaim lived an extremely simple life and got by on very little. That’s not realistic or expected for most of us today.
It Tethers You to This World
As part of his case for why work is inherently valuable, Rabbi Goldberger notes that it tethers you to this world. It’s worth adding that this isn’t just a hashkafic idea, it’s a halachic one. Someone who doesn’t have a job and gambles for his parnassa instead is passul l’eidus, disqualified as a witness, because he’s not osek b’yishuvo shel olam. He isn’t part of society, and he isn’t contributing meaningfully to the world around him.
Interestingly, there’s no explicit mitzvah that requires a person to be osek b’yishuvo shel olam. But I think the root of the concept is basic: the pasuk tells Adam Harishon “pru u’rvu u’milu es ha’aretz”, to procreate and fill the land. We’re not just meant to bring children into the world, we’re meant to build the conditions for them to live, succeed, and thrive. That includes economic development, which is foundational to any human society.
Parenthetically, this is part of why so many people in large corporations, B2B, consulting, and similar roles struggle to feel a sense of meaning at work. They’re far removed from the actual effect their job has on real people, unlike a customer-facing role where it’s easy to see that your store or your service is providing something to someone.
Life’s a Pie Chart
This was, by far, my favorite section of Rabbi Goldberger’s piece, and I think it’s a message that isn’t repeated enough. Here’s a quote:
I once received a call from a yungerman who wanted to come to our Kollel. When I asked him why, he explained that he had calculated that he would be able to learn an hour more a day in our Kollel than where he currently was.
In the course of the conversation, I perceived a flaw in his thinking. He seemed to be viewing life like a bar graph: the more learning you can fit into it, the higher the bar goes, and therefore the better your life is. I don’t think that’s how we should measure a life, life is more like a pie chart.
“How much learning can I squeeze into my day?” is the wrong question. Instead we should be asking how the various parts of my life fit together into a wholesome whole and how they align toward the goal of the person I am trying to become.
A lot of the discourse in the Torah world runs on more, more, more: learn more, be in shiur more, be in the beis medrash more. As Rabbi Goldberger points out, that can have real, unhealthy effects. This isn’t an argument against ambition, or against trying to learn a lot. But the idea that life is a pie chart, made up of many important and legitimate pieces, needs to be taught and reinforced, not just assumed.
I experienced this firsthand. I made real mistakes early in my marriage that stemmed from this kind of thinking, and it took time to shift out of it, even once I was already in kollel. I’ve written before about the transition from yeshiva to kollel. I’d add that part of that transition needs to be a shift away from the bar chart mentality. Maybe a single guy in yeshiva can pull off living like life has one variable (learning) and one linear chart which is to be maximized. Once you have a family, the pie chart isn’t optional.
Identity and Role
Rabbi Goldberger also brings a conversation with Rabbi Lopiansky about identity and the role a person is meant to play. There is nothing wrong with being a proud bahlabus, and make you decisions accordingly. This connects to something I’ve seen in the Mishna Berura. In one place (Orach Chaim 156:2), he says a person should minimize work and maximize learning, going so far as to say one should work the bare minimum. But elsewhere (Orach Chaim 231), on the words v’chol ma’asecha yihyu l’shem shamayim, he writes that certain people, if they have the right skills and the right koach to succeed in business, are considered lashem shamayim even when doing business not for parnassa. If someone can create more economic opportunity for others in the community, and give more tzedaka, that’s worthwhile.
I heard something similar from David Lichtenstein on Shtark Tank. He’s a billionaire who could easily scale back his business and spend far more time learning. I asked him why he doesn’t. He said that plenty of people can sit in kollel and learn, or teach a shiur in a yeshiva. It’s much rarer to find someone who can make a kiddush Hashem as a business leader who is also osek b’Torah. That’s not something to look down on.
In Conclusion
Rabbi Goldberger’s full piece is worth reading in full.
It’s a good reminder that “how much should I work” is usually the wrong question to start with.
"I experienced this firsthand. I made real mistakes early in my marriage that stemmed from this kind of thinking, and it took time to shift out of it, even once I was already in kollel." - along similar lines, I was surprised when one of my rebbeim told me not to go back to learning night seder in yeshiva for a length of time after getting married; he explained that i need to make sure my wife knows i'm happy spending time with her so she interprets it as running to seder rather than running from her.