Career choice

The Duties of the Heart says to choose an occupation that suits one's nature. However, the frum world today says to run all decisions by rabbis and rabbis have no clue about careers. To them, the male portion of the Jewish world is divided into two groups: rabbis and baalei batim. The latter are these slobs whose job is to make lots of money and give it to rabbis. Some make more money. Some make less. There's no conception of suitability to a profession. All professions are narishkite anyway. The whole world is a joke to rabbis, unless a dentist or repairman is needed. If a young man even talks about choosing a profession he is steered back into more Gemara lomdus for as many more years as he can stand. Career choice is a verboten topic. Any musings about it are repressed, stamped out. It is regarded as a type of sin.

Yet, the moment the young man is done with yeshiva, if only because the wife that he was finally allowed to obtain, demands it, he now plunges into the working world without training. In Western societies this is a problem, because work is specialized and often requires skill and knowledge, and it is very demanding. You can't support yourself pushing around a milk cart anymore. Works requires dedication and concentration. And that's hard to do if you aren't interested in the work. The Duties of the Heart anticipated all of this. If only rabbis listened to him.

It annoys me when rabbis ask, "What do you do?" And they all ask. It annoys me because when I was in yeshiva I was not allowed to ask, "What will I do?" I wasn't allowed to get any job training. I was talked out of continuing in graduate school. One rabbi even tried to talk me out of getting a job cleaning a shul a half hour a day so that I could eat and maybe go on dates. Now they all want to know, "What do you do?" Read: Do you have money that you can give me?

The moment you walk out the yeshiva door you are expected to be a millionaire. I was once at a parlor meeting and the rabbi of the local shul approached me asking me where I lived. I pointed to the small condos across the street. I kid you not, he turned away, showing me the back of his head and walked away. He wants to hook up with the rich baalei batim only. How they got that way, I cannot say. I suppose usually it's through family money. It wasn't through careful planning and training as advised by a rabbi because rabbis are clueless about ways of earning a parnassah. They know only how to spend it.