This bonus episode is a crossover from the Shtark Tank podcast. It tracks Rabbi Rafi Dembovsky journey from a Torah-only yeshiva bachur to the author of a sefer on Torah im Derech Eretz. He grew up in a home where everyone worked, but absorbed a Torah-only hashkafa from his rebbeim at Hasmonean and Yeshivas Toras Moshe. Seven years into Kollel, a pull toward his in-laws’ seforim, Rav Hirsch’s Nineteen Letters, and a hard search for the right cheder for his son sent him back to the sugya in Berachot on Rabbi Yishmael, and into halachic questions about taking money for learning and the value of secular study. The sefer that came out of it, weighing Torah-only against Torah im Derech Eretz on the sources, almost didn’t make it to print. Getting haskamot cost him more than he expected.

Rafi lands somewhere both camps can live with: both paths are authentic, and which one is right can shift across a person’s life. He’s still in Kollel and now studying law at Hebrew University too. Worth hearing how he got there.