Today's J. Post cartoon

In another development of the ongoing State of of Israel vs. The Chareidim drama, Rabbi Yosef Elyashiv, one of the top rabbis of the chareidi community, went on record saying that it's impossible to lead a life of Torah observance if one integrates into the secular world (i.e., serves in the army, gets a job, etc.). This spectacular display of shortsightedness inspired me to contrast it with just a small sampling of some famous rabbis from over the generations who did, in fact, have real "secular" jobs.
Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar (3rd century CE) was more precisely a sandalmaker (or possibly an Alexandrian--there's some debate as to his surname's meaning, but he was a contemporary of rabbis who were launderers (Rabbi Hoshayah), tailors (Rabbi Abba Bar Zamina), cotton merchants (Shimon HaPakuli), and so on). Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105) is the most famous of all the Torah commentators. Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon (1135-1204) is better known as Maimonides and was not just a physician but the Sultan of Egypt's personal doctor and a scientist to boot.
UPDATE: Reblogged by Tom Carew of no surrender-ne pasaran.
Drawn using:
No. 2 pencil (sketch)
Black 0.4 mm pilot pen
Black 0.5 mm pilot pen
Serif PhotoPlus 6.0