What do we call a spade?

(5) Rabbi Yishmael [the son of Rabbi Levitas] says: One who studies Torah in order to teach will be given the opportunity both to study and to teach. One who studies in order to practice will be given the opportunity to study, to teach, to observe, and to practice. Rabbi Tzadok says: Do not make them [words of Torah?] into a crown with which to aggrandize yourself, and do not make them into a spade, to dig with them. And thus Hillel used to say: One who makes use of the crown [of learning] passes away. From here you learn that any one who benefits from the words of the Torah removes his life from the world.

After I had already resolved not to speak about this instruction, both because it is quite clear and because, in my opinion, my words will not please most of the great Torah sages -perhaps not any of them - I then went back on my resolution and decided I will speak about it, without worrying about either my predecessors or my contemporaries.

Know that that which he said not to make the Torah into a spade with which to dig - meaning to say, do not consider it a tool to live by - he explained and said that anyone who benefits in this world from the honor of Torah removes his life from the world - the explanation of which is, from life in the world to come. Yet people have missed this obvious language and thrown it over the backs. And they have depended upon understandings of the words that they [themselves] did not understand - and I will explain them. And they established rules for themselves upon individuals and upon communities, and they brought people to think in their total foolishness that it is mandatory and fitting that they help the sages and their students and the people involved in Torah, and for whom their Torah [study] is their craft. And this is all a mistake, and nothing is found in the Torah or in the words of the rabbis, may their memory be blessed, that substantiates it or gives it a basis to rest upon at all. As when we look into the words of the rabbis, may their memory be blessed, we do not find among them that they were requesting money from people and they did not collect money for the honored and precious academies, nor for the heads of the exiles, nor for their judges, nor for the promulgators of Torah - not for one of their greats and not for any people of the nation. Rather, we find in each and every generation in all of their communities that there were among [the Torah scholars] poor men of extreme poverty and wealthy men of extreme wealth...

And you already know that Hillel the Elder was a wood chopper and that he studied in front of Shemaya and Avtalyon and he was extremely poor. And his rank was such that you know that some of his students were compared to Moshe, Aharon and Yehoshua; and the least of his students was Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. And there is no doubt to the intelligent one that if he had instructed the people of his generation to let him benefit from them, they would not have allowed him to be a wood chopper.

And [also] Rabbi Chaninah ben Dosa..

And Karna was a judge in the Land of Israel and he was a water drawer....

And Rabbi Yosef would carry wood from place to place and would say, "(Beautiful) [Great] is work, as it heats up its master" - meaning to say with the effort of his limbs...

Elisha did not take money from people - all the more so did he not request [it] from them and establish rules for them, God forbid...

Shmuel would not enter the home of a person and would not eat from any man. ...

And why should I write at length about this matter. Instead, I will mention a story which elucidates it in the Gemara (Nedarim 62a). And it is that a [certain] man had a vineyard in which thieves would enter. And each time he would see them on each day he [would] find his fruit lessening progressively. And he did not have a doubt that one of the thieves put his eye upon it. And [so], he was pained by this all the days of the harvest until he harvested what [was left for him to] harvest. And he put them out to dry until they dried and he gathered in the raisins. And the way of people when they gather dried fruit is that a few individual figs or grapes would fall. And it is permissible to eat them because they are ownerless and the owners already left them for their finders due to their small quantity. And Rabbi Tarfon came one day to that vineyard by chance and he sat and took from the raisins that fell and ate them. And the owner of the field thought that this was the thief that stole from him the whole year - and he did not recognize [Rabbi Tarfon] but had heard of him. And [so] he immediately took him and overpowered him and placed him in a sack and placed him on his back to throw him into the river. And when Rabbi Tarfon saw this, he yelled out and said, "Woe to Tarfon, for this man is killing him." And when the owner of the vineyard heard, he left him and ran away, knowing that he had sinned a great sin. But Rabbi Tarfon was distressed from that day onwards all of his days and he mourned about that which happened to him, as he saved himself through the honor of the Torah, while he was very rich and could have said, "Leave me and I will give you such and such gold coins." And he could have given them to him and he did not need to inform him that that he was Rabbi Tarfon. And [that way] he would have saved himself with his money and not with Torah. And they said, "All the days of that righteous man, he was distressed over this matter, saying, 'Woe is me, for I made use of the crown of Torah'" - as anyone who use the crown of Torah does not have a share in the world to come and is uprooted from the world. And they said about this, "It was since Rabbi Tarfon was very rich, and he should have appeased him with money."

The salary that they give a rabbi, or what he gets from a wedding, we might say that this is just compensation for not being able to work (batalah). For since he has become obligated in teaching others, and cannot engage in labor. So there is no prohibition here of "I received [Torah] for free, so you all should receive it for free." (Nedarim 37a) Because the compensation is not for the Torah, but just for the cost of not being able to work.

And the Rambam, of blessed memory, went on at great length in his commentary on this chapter, and was very, very stringent. However, it seems to me that when someone who has been appointed from the congregation to take a leadership position, we should say that since he has been appointed as a provider for the general public, and is prohibited from doing his own work... then the congregation should also provide for him, as a matter of honor. And in this generation, we must not be so stringent on ourselves. Nor, however, should we be overly lenient, such that our congregants think that the whole point of learning is to benefit from others. Then they will ask for the same benefits, and so the honor of the Torah will be brought down to the ground and disgraced. However, we cannot be too particular about all this in this generation, in which - due to our great sins - no Talmid Chacham can be found.

Nor a kardom to dig with - It seems to me that it should read "to chop with," not "to dig with." Because a kardom is a tool used to chop and split wood. [As we see in Beitzah 31a]

And one may not chop with an axe nor with a saw nor with a sickle, but rather only with a hatchet.

(5) It is like men wielding axes against a gnarled tree; (6) with hatchet and pike they hacked away at its carved work.