Is being on welfare if you can work against the will of Hashem?

Question

Genesis 3:17

And to man He said, "Because you listened to your wife, and you ate from the tree from which I commanded you saying, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed be the ground for your sake; with toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life.

Proverbs 13:4.

The soul of the lazy man desires but has nothing, but the soul of the diligent shall be sated.

Ecclesiastes 10:18.

Through laziness the rafter sinks, and with idleness of the hands the house leaks.

Proverbs 14:23

In every toil there will be gain, but a word of the lips is only for loss.

Proverbs 22:29

Have you seen a man quick in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before poor men.

Proverbs 6:6-11

Go to the ant, you sluggard; see her ways and become wise,

for she has no chief, overseer, or ruler;

yet she prepares her bread in the summer; she gathers her food in the harvest.

O lazy one, how long will you lie [there]; when will you get up from your sleep?

"A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to lie."

your poverty shall come like a fast walker and your want as an armed man.

It says in the bible that it is good and required for man to work. So if you are on welfare if you can and should work is that against the will of Hashem?

Answer 1

Your question cited Christian Scripture in support of your point -- that's not going to support it from this audience, and we'd ask you not to bring that here. (This site has accepted questions asking for the Judaic context to certain events in Christian Scripture, but that's different.) But yes, this subject has been debated within classical Jewish sources. Often with different verses; many that you quote are about generic toil. A broader point is that viewing the Torah as something to make money is a blatant disrespect to it.

The short answer is that in theory, someone able-bodied should be working. An argument has been made that if we left study for the physically weak or part-timers, we wouldn't have enough of it, so some are studying full-time out of communal necessity. Others argued this was especially vital when rebuilding the Jewish community post-Holocaust.

You will hear such attitudes among many in Israel's "ultra-Orthodox" camp today (in which, interestingly, many Hassidic communities are more open to working than their non-Hassidic ultra-Orthodox counterparts). Many will continue to argue that times are still desperate and a full-out effort is needed ... while others may see the numbers differently. I'll leave it there.

Answer 2

I write this as someone in favor of working for a living, and who agrees with Shalom's answer, that this has been debated within Jewish sources.

Your question initially cited Thessalonians, which is in the Christian Bible, and the other citations are from Biblical verses from the Hebrew Bible. However, Jews follow not just the Bible (Tanach) but various sources of Oral Law, such as Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, and so on. And, it is not just that these are competing sources of law and thought, but the latter informs upon the former, how to interpret these sources. Even within the sources of Oral Law, there are instructions that one shouldn't rule (determine law in practice) based on just the Mishnah, or based on just the Talmud. This is because one needs to know how to read these sources, know later strata of analysis, know where some statement applies or does not apply.

So, while for Christians, it may be a matter of collecting a series of Biblical verses which have a broad message, for Orthodox Jews, it may not suffice. They will want to know how these verses have been interpreted, and will also assume that Midrash, Talmud, writing of rabbis of later generations have all taken these (and other) Biblical sources as input and arrived at other conclusions, and will therefore look to the later sources. I'll play devil's advocate, to flesh this out.

To take your first example, you cite Genesis 3:17. This is a explicitly a curse to mankind. One might argue that this is therefore not the ideal situation. Are we certain that a life of hard toil is the ideal? If someone has succeeded early in life, must he still devote his life to labor in the field, rather than e.g. exploring intellectual pursuits? Womankind was cursed with pain of labor in birth. Does that mean that a woman must refuse an epidural during labor?

Your second example is from the book of Proverbs, Mishlei. This book is taken by Christians to be aphorisms of how to live a good life, but by many Jewish sources as Meshalim, allegories, where there is a literal meaning but an intended allegorical meaning of something else. Rashi, a prominent Biblical commentator, writes:

The soul of the lazy man desires but has nothing His soul desires all good, but has nothing. but the soul of the diligent shall be sated The upright who eat from the toil of their hands. This is its meaning according to its simple interpretation. According to its allegorical meaning, in the future he will see the glory of the Torah scholar and long for it, but he will not achieve it.

Such that its intended focus is on labors in Torah study. Does the literal meaning, necessary in order to understand the allegory, also have standing as instructions for life? That could be debated.

I won't go through the remainder of the Biblical sources because the above should suffice to illustrate the idea. I'll just repeat, these sources might indeed imply this, and other sources might also endorse the idea. But mere Biblical verses, cited out of context and without other analysis, is not compelling to those operating in the Jewish tradition.

For one example of many, see Berachot 35b, where competing ideas of work vs. Torah study are brought, all based on analysis of Biblical verses.

Answer 3

A simple answer may be that someone who is involved with the holy Torah is neither lazy nor isn't toiling (albeit in Torah). I think that everyone agrees that people should not sit at home and just take benefits. The argument and difference in Hashkafah is only whether one should work for a living or rely on Hashem and go into learning (if I am not mistaken)

Answer 4

You are allowed to do anything to support your Jewish life and family. As long as it is not illegal, you can procure money/ livelihood from anywhere and any which way. Don't get involved too much in these sorts of political issues. Also you, your parents and grandparents etc. gave money towards welfare in the form of taxes. There is nothing wrong with taking back what is yours. At the end of the day, G_d who is the supreme calculator of chesbonoth will take care of it. You also seem to assume that just being alive as a Jew and being Jewish is some how not doing any good to the world.