Absolute faith and not prudential reason is to resolve the tension between attending to the burdens of the real world and the transcendence that comes with total immersion in a life of Torah. God will surely protect and sustain a nation wholly absorbed by its divine mission. But remarkably the editors of the Talmud do not give the nod to the uncompromising temperament of the mystic. Thus, despite the priority of Torah study in the scale of talmudic values, there is no predilection to denigrate the dignity of human labor. Students of Torah are not urged to lead a monastic life nor exempted from the duty of providing for their families.
Zeal is to be balanced by responsibility.
But in contemporary Judaism moderation has been tossed to the winds. Ultra-orthodoxy in Israel has utterly repudiated the normative view of Rabbi Yishmael. The discarded extremism of Rabbi Shimon prevails with a vengeance. Some 200,000 young men from high school age on up are currently dedicated to the proposition that their only task in life is to study Torah. No need to prepare for a livelihood, no duty to defend their homeland.