By the time I had reached the age of six, my parents had already planned my future for me. My father told me that according to law, a father should provide for his son until the child was six years old. He took me aside and said that I should try to be a man; I should study--and if I didn't, he would apprentice me to Samuel the Capmaker so that I could learn capmaking. Even as a child, I had a certain contempt for capmaking. A tailor makes a garment, but a capmaker--there's no trick to making a cap. Since I did not want to become a capmaker, I obeyed my father and studied. Truthfully speaking, I did not want to study. I wanted to play with the shadow on the wall; I wanted to sit alone in the corner of the teacher's garden and dig the ground with a spade. I wanted to catch flies and bury them or visit the cemetery to read the inscriptions on the tombstones. But I overcame my desires and studied the proverbs and grammar with the rabbi, and the Talmud with my father. My father was semicontent.

When he was very pleased with me, he would take me upon his lap, and say, "My son, if you will study, the world will be yours. You will be a rabbi. If you are a man of great erudition, you will be a great rabbi, i. e., a great scholar, and then you will be the happiest person in the world. Only a man who studies constantly, day and night, can be a great scholar. People who are worried about making a living, are unable to study day and night. That is why only a rabbi can be a great scholar because he doesn't have to worry about making a living--he forgets about everything, and studies because a true scholar and a lover of the Torah hasn't the time to think about anything but the Torah."

My father's description of a rabbi has remained vividly in my memory and I can never forget that picture--a Jew who keeps studying day and night--studying and studying--until the last moment of his life.

The rabbis whom I had seen in my youth were exactly such people as my 3father had described to me--they were great scholars, sincere man, and great paupers.....They were my father's ideal. He wanted his son to become a rabbi, but the hope he entertained was not realized because nine years later, I left my father's supervision and entered "evil ways"; I entered the Gymnasium [High School] instead of the Theological seminary. But the love for a rabbi, as my father had pictured him, remained with me.....

Properly speaking, what sort of an institution is rabbinism? What must a rabbi do? A rabbi must continue the tradition of study; he must advance the knowledge of the Torah--otherwise the Torah will be forgotten and we will become a nation of farm hands. He must study and become a great scholar. Only one who devotes all of his time to study, can be a great scholar. A layman is unable to do that. The congregation pays him [a rabbi] a salary so that he won't have to worry about making a living, and will be able to continue his studies. The magid [preacher] can 4deliver a sermon. The president of a synagogue or the head of a community can provide for the needs of the community. A representative can and must act as spokesman for his people. The rabbi must study. Because he is a scholar who has an astute mind, people go to him with difficult problems; the rabbi is asked to settle disputes. From time to time, he delivers a sermon, not too often, but occasionally. The chief duty of a rabbi is to study.

I inherited these "outmoded" views on the rabbinate from my father, and I can no more free myself from these views than I can from my skin. Fate, however, dragged me to America where the rabbis are different from my mental picture of them. In America, rabbinism is merely a profession, a trade, just like capmaking, for example.....I have to speak with rabbis who could not even become capmakers in the old country, let alone rabbis.....Here in Chicago they are rabbis; some of them even call themselves "chief rabbi" of Chicago. For a dollar they grant a divorce, for a quarter they 5perform a marriage ceremony, for a dime they render a eulogy, and for a nickel they will proclaim food to be kosher. What is their stock in trade? They have short beards and a great deal of arrogance. They are ignoramuses and fakers. They want two things in return for their illiteracy and arrogance--money and honor. In short, boors and common swindlers become rabbis in America. What is the function of a rabbi? His function is to study, to be sincere, to be an idealist. Common illiterates become rabbis and become the heads of synagogues. Common swindlers are rabbis; they call themselves rabbis, receive rabbinical positions, deliver sermons, render Talmudic decisions, etc. A city like Chicago, which is a metropolis of Jews, permits this profanation, this anarchy!

I have nothing against the fake rabbis because some of them are, in a certain sense, honest. I recently taunted one for accepting a rabbinical position after having been an anarchist. He asked me whether it would have been better if he had been a former pickpocket. But I would flay 6the synagogue presidents and other prominent laymen and cover them with salt--or honey and let a multitude of bees on them--because they are worse than the fake rabbis whom they hire. They are undermining the whole structure of Judaism in America. The synagogue presidents or synagogue politicians are transforming palaces into pigsties.