Sunday, May 25, 2014

What do they want from the Avreichim, that they should die from hunger?

So says the cover of this weeks Mishpacha's magazine where the cover story interviews the head of the largest Gemach in the world (who has seen a tremendous increase in the number of people taking loans), and details the financial crisis that the Israeli Charedi community is going through.


98% are requesting loans just to continue living. I know for sure of hundreds of girls who are sitting at home because there is no money to marry them off . People come to us because they need expensive treatments. What should I tell them? That they should forgo surgery until the government will fall? What do they want from the Avreichim - that they should die of hunger?

R' Kuperman then goes on to blame the financial crisis in the Charedi world on the government which has cut funding and the Charedi rich who don't give enough tzedaka.

What he fails to say is that the Charedi world itself is to blame for setting up a society that cannot sustain itself. When you set up a system where every man is supposed to sit and learn in kollel forever, you are setting the society up for a financial collapse.

Of course people can't marry off their daughters when the price for such a marriage is an apartment plus support for the husband to keep learning. Where on earth is the money going to come from when the father of the girl has himself been sitting in kollel for 20 years?

Of course people can't pay for expensive surgery because they have no supplementary health insurance because they can't afford the few shekels a month for such insurance.

Of course people have to take out loan after loan to pay their monthly bills, when the husband is sitting and learning (earning almost nothing) and the wife is earning next to nothing because she wasn't allowed to get a university degree.

A while back I posted a quote from R' Shteinman that people should not buy life insurance as the merit of giving tzedaka to the widows and orphans is what is saving this generation from destruction. The practical result of this policy is that every single day I get a flyer in my mailbox telling of some tragic death and that because of it the wife and children have no food to eat.

Someone in the Israeli Charedi world (not Jonathan Rosenblum) needs to state the obvious truth, that the current system is financially bankrupt and cannot go on. Much of the Charedi world is living in a fantasy world that the government is going to fall and the Charedim will be in the next government and restore the government money. It isn't going to happen. No Israeli government in the foreseeable future is going to give significant amounts of money to the Charedim. The Charedi world is going to have to wake up and understand that it has to become self supporting, and not self supporting with a handful of super rich paying the bills and the rest sitting and learning, but self supporting where the majority of the population goes out and works and only the true elite sit and learn long term.


7 comments:

dlz said...

If 95% of the people using the gemach are taking the money for day-to-day expenses, it isn't going to be the biggest gemach in the world for long. How are all these people going to ever return the loans?

Mighty Garnel Ironheart said...

> Much of the Charedi world is living in a fantasy world that the government is going to fall and the Charedim will be in the next government and restore the government money

And that might very well happen. Bibi has done everything he can to shield the Chareidim from Yesh Atid's plans because he knows that Yesh Atid might disappear in the next election but the Chareidim will still be around.

spacedoutBT said...

Ovadiya Ha Navi died with huge debts after trying to hide Torah scholars of Izebel. Elisha had to redeem Ovadiya's son with a nes to keep him from being bonded into servitude. Elisha told Gehazi to inform his talmidim that they didn't have to hoard food from one day to the next to show bitachon and they were rewarded.What are we seeing here? The ancient kingdom did NOT have programs for supporting kollelim.

Berel said...

To quote Rabbi Ginsburg from the American Mispacha "And don't think it is only "them" who are suffering.A prominent Hesder Rosh Yeshiva told me that in his community he has children suffering from malnutrition for the first time he can remember"

Orthonomics said...

I'm always struck by how passive the people are portrayed (and it seems reasonable accurate), e.g. "girls sitting at home." When I get Lakewood letters for "older" singles that don't have the funds to get married I always think, you are 26, YOU can create those funds.

Chana said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKhbaLyIFw

frum single female said...

What I want to know is how someone can get married at all if one can't afford it? Forget the wedding itself. No one needs a big wedding. A wedding itself is a happy occasion. That is what makes it beautiful. Food and housing cost money. Clothing costs money. If one can't afford these things one is not ready to get married.