[PapaBear3625]

I’ve read editorials which describe it as some Orthodox misunderstanding the mandates to study Torah to mean you can do it to the exclusion of working and supporting your family, as well as some using it as an excuse to avoid military service and live off the state.

Somehow, I don't think this could have been their lifestyle 200 years ago. Before the mid-20th Century, everybody's situation, of whatever religion, was "work or starve" (unless you had inherited a lot of assets).

[wideawake]

Somehow, I don't think this could have been their lifestyle 200 years ago.

It was, but the pyramid has flattened.

There always was a scholar class supported by the rest, but over time the membership in that class seems to have expanded to embrace a larger and larger portion of the population.