Reply To: Should teachers/rebbis get a full time salary?

DY – Nobody is “bashing” anything. It’s a frank question, but not intended to demean the importance of quality teachers – the quality part being lacking.

Athletes – again, supply and demand. If you want a quality quarterback who can compete in the NFL you need to find natural talent, good genetics, and extreme athleticism. Also, they spend thousands of hours doing intense training the other half of the year in order to perform successfully, and you have hundreds of thousands of people paying tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to watch a team of a handful of players. Supply and demand.

By the way, it is completely halachically assur for rabbeim to charge money for the teaching of Torah. Torah knowledge cannot be monetized, halachically. The payment afforded to rabbeim is only muttar because of the necessary loophole of schar hefsed. Which means that you are essentially paying them for lost wages of the job they would otherwise be doing if they were not teaching Torah. Therefore, the payment is commiserate with the value of what would be deemed an average compensation, not with the value of the Torah learning, because then you’d be right – טוב לי תורת פיך מאלפי זהב וכסף.

To your last point – Good! They should be taking summer jobs to balance out their yearly wages. I think that’s fair. I just don’t think they should complain for having to do that. How many social workers deal with traumatizing situations all year round for about the same or less than a teacher’s annual salary and don’t get 3 months off?