Reply To: Does the state really support Torah?

I’m going by what I head from Rabbi Miller. He said when he was in Lithuania before the war, most of the men weren’t working and they spent their days in the shteebel.

To some extent we project backward on former times. We work 12 hours a day but today that’s in part because we are all urban. In agrarian times, worked stopped at sunset and there wasn’t much to do in the Winter. And there was no TV obviously, no internet or sports. No day trips in the car. There was nothing else to do but go to the beis midrash. There was much more torah study in those days than we think. We have this image that our ancestors were all amei haaretz and we are the big learners. I don’t think it’s correct. After the haskala there was a big problem and after the holocaust. but in 1700 it was a different story.