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This week's question is as follows. Is one allowed to use an old college paper from a friend and just change a bunch of things around and hand it in? Are you allowed to pay people to write papers for you? If people have a hold of old tests and they send them out, are you allowed to use it to study? And what role should college play in our lives? Well, I think let's start with the last question first. What role should college play in our lives? The Alter Rebbe in Tanya discusses two reasons. why a person would learn Chachmas Umas Ha'olam, the wisdom of the world. And he says the first reason is for Parnassah, which is eminently reasonable in today's generation. If a person wants to go out into the world and make a Parnassah, and unfortunately today the nature of the world is that we need two income families. then it's important that people, not just women, but all people, have an education that allows them to engage the world.
For many, that means going to college. Unless you have a family business that you don't need to go to college, most people today will need to go to college to get that piece of paper in order to go out and engage the world. For men, sometimes the question is when. But for women, after returning from seminary, it's certainly a reasonable thing for a person to go to college so that they can make a decent parnasa and support their family. A family that struggles with parnasa often has shalom bias issues, which is not to say that wealthy people don't have shalom bias issues as well. But it's important that we live in a comfortable way so that we can serve Hashem. Going to college today is a very good way of learning trade so that a person can make a parnasa and be able to go out and engage the world and be mekkadashi. Hashem shamayim. The second reason why the Alter Rebbe says a person can learn Chachmas and Masa Olam is because very often, when we learn things about the world,
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we have the opportunity to appreciate Hakadosh Baruch Hu more. This is what the Rambam says as well. And so if you're going to college and you have the opportunity to learn things about Hakadosh Baruch Hu's world, that will give you the opportunity to serve Hashem. Sometimes it means that by knowing math and science, we'll have a better appreciation for Torah. And sometimes it means, for Hakadosh Baruch Hu's Bria, we'll have the capability of looking into the cosmos and seeing the wonderful vast world that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created for us. So perhaps if a person is taking an economics class, that won't necessarily bring them closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But that will help them further their Parnassah. Sometimes taking a science class may not necessarily be the best way of making a Parnassah, but it will give them a greater appreciation for the Borei Olam. My Rebbe, Review the Parnashlita, had a Kabbalah from Rav Ruderman, who had a Kabbalah from the author of Slabatka, that a Rebbe is responsible to take care of the total Talmud.
And taking care of the total Talmud meant ensuring that the Talmud had a Parnassah, which is why my Rebbe used to encourage boys to go to college, and he used to tell them, this is important for your life. Now, how should a person go to college? Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky, Zechet Tzadok Levracha, used to tell people that when they go to college, they should do college well. Sometimes Yeshiva Bacharim will say, I don't really want to focus on my college because it's going to impact my learning. And Rav Yaakov used to say to them that if you don't do college well, that will impact your learning as well. When you're lazy in one area, somehow it bleeds over into other areas of your life as well. And if you're lazy in college, then you'll end up being lazy in your learning. I think the same holds true when it comes to honesty and integrity. If we're not going to have integrity in college, that's going to bleed into other areas of our life. So before we get into the details of the specific case or cases that the questioner asked, let's start off with one basic premise.
We're not going into college to be dishonest. We're going into college to make a parnasa. We're going into college to learn more about the Chachmas Umasa Olam. So, using an old college paper from a friend and just changing a bunch of things, it seems dishonest to me. Paying people papers for you seems dishonest to me. If people have a hold of old tests and they send them out, again, I think if the teacher is using old tests, then that's the teacher's fault. I think that displays a laziness on the part of the teacher. And in that case, I would not be convinced that that would be dishonest. Certainly, you don't know if the teacher is going to give the same test over and over again. And if you do, I don't think that's dishonest. I think the real question here is one of a smell test. If it smells dishonest, I would stay away from it. There's no reason to be melech leich yourself, to lose your dignity and your honor by being deceitful. And I think that in today's generation, where we see more and more people that cheat.
because they simply don't have the wherewithal to study, I think we're losing something very precious. Titen emes liyakov. Yaakov v'nuzmida is emes. And even though we're named Klal Yisrael, Yaakov's name is Yisrael. The hallmark of a Jew is their honesty. When we look in the world today and we see so many terrible chel Hashem's of people that are just being dishonest and stealing millions and hundreds of millions of dollars, splashed across the pages of the world, in the newspapers and social media, etc., etc., it does a tremendous dishonor to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And it's our job to come into this world and be Mekadosh Shem Shamayim. If you're not honest in college, I doubt you're going to end up being honest in life.
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