Reply To: Calling people with questionable smicha Rabbi

oomis: Online smicha currently costs $ 4,920. If some rich kid gets smicha from here who has plenty of money and free time, spends 20 years as a lawyer and doesn’t learn a day after that: your father should be mekaved him while he addresses your father who learns Torah all day as Mr. so and so?

So according to you the Chafetz Chaim should be not have been called Rabbi but rather Mr. so and so like your father was while the guy who got an easy smicha for $4000 in two years online or from some tiny yeshiva and hasn’t learned in 20 years and works as a lawyer should?

I’m sorry but I cannot think of anything more ridiculous. In my yeshiva there are people who do not have smicha and are called Rabbis because they actually teach while others have a two year smicha from 50 years ago and haven’t learned in years yet should be called Rabbi?

You are using examples of what goyim do and how they address each-other to make your point but I do not think that is comparable. Throughout Jewish history in galus (until recently) since the real smicha was lost people with and without “smicha” have been called Rabbi. Reform and Conservative Jews also have “smicha”.