The Rabbis’ Monopoly on Torah Study

Few of their fellow Jews would have been able to live up to the rabbis’ high standards of scholarly expertise. Even wealthy Jews who had sufficient money and leisure time to study were considered to lack expertise in Scripture, Mishnah, and Talmud, not to mention the narrative tradition and prayer formulas. This midrashic story indicates that rabbis looked down on nonrabbinic Jews, whom they considered unlearned and unworthy of their fellowship. At the same time, the story acknowledges ordinary Jews’ derekh erets (lit., “way of the land”), good moral behavior in daily life. Such moral behavior is not necessarily based on the knowledge of Scripture and rabbinic traditions but reflects a common form of ethics practiced in civil societies. The notion that the Torah is the inheritance of all Jews may have been used in the criticism of a rabbinic monopoly on Torah scholarship.