Dog Food and Disaster

The danger of financial desperation

There are countless families in Israel whose lives have been shattered this past year, in various ways. There are people who have been kidnapped, killed, or seriously injured. There are people whose businesses have been destroyed because they were called up to the reserves for months, or because of the collapse of tourism, or because of being evacuated from their home towns.

Amidst all this, I saw an article today on Arutz Sheva about one young man in captivity whose life is in danger, but his family can rescue him if they can raise $120,000. As his wife explains:

“My husband was in Europe to pray at the kivrei tzaddikim. There, he met an old acquaintance, who offered to help him to make more parnassah. My husband is always working to support our family, and took him up on the offer. The acquaintance gave him an easy job: Transport a bag of dog food from Amsterdam to Moldova, for $500. Naively, he took the opportunity.”

Entirely unsurprisingly, the bag turned out not to be dog food. The man is currently in prison in Moldova for smuggling narcotics.

(The story is reminiscent of the charedi man who was imprisoned for smuggling wild-caught turtles which he claimed were family pets… all fifty-nine of them.)

Could someone really be so foolish as to think that they are getting an easy $500 to transport dog food to Eastern Europe? If so, then I’m not sure what wisdom their Torah study is imparting. But financial desperation leads people to make rash choices. This young father was apparently so desperate for $500 that he made a very, very foolish decision. And his father, who must be at least in his fifties, is still an avreich in kollel! They have 13 children and no funds to help their son.

This is exactly why Chazal stated that if someone does not educate their child with the means to be self-supportive, they have effectively raised their child to be a thief.

Charedi society, especially in Israel, raises its young men to be so lacking in general education and financial stability and Chazal’s ethic of work and self-sufficiency and honesty that they sometimes resort to illegal shtick to get by. And while many don’t stoop to such things, the community’s politicians have the role of squeezing the rest of the country for all the money that they can get, even during a war. And when the country desperately needs economic strength to win and survive its wars, the charedi leadership is instead going to America to raise $100 million to indulge and perpetuate their economy-draining lifestyle. There is no acknowledgement whatsoever that maybe they need to rethink their approach.

They are leading their people to ruin, and it could also destroy everyone else. Charitable assistance to charedi institutions should be conditioned on reform - on returning to the values of Chazal.