(Don't) Just Say No
When charedi collectors come to your door
We all expect the young men and women of the IDF to demonstrate great bravery. We want them to risk their very lives and face the horrors of Hamas and other terrorists. We want them to go into Gaza and Lebanon and risk everything.
But what bravery do we ourselves exhibit?
There’s something very simple and basic that all of us need to do. Some people are too shy or nervous or afraid. But we need to step up.
The charedi lack of participation in the IDF, and even more so the undereducation and deliberate underemployment, is nothing less than an existential threat to Israel. There is a huge shortage of soldiers, and the crushing burden placed upon the reservists is not viable in the long-term. And the underployment is an ever-growing drain on the economy, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually, that Israel simply cannot afford.
There’s no simple solutions. Attempts at dialogue and “soft” change have gotten nowhere significant. The only thing that could perhaps force a change is cutting off the funding. Most of that funding comes from government support, and can only be removed via the ballot box and pressure upon politicians. But some of it comes from private donations.
It’s Adar, which is the season when charedi yeshivos go around collecting. It is absolutely wrong to give money to them and thereby to enable and support the problem. If they say that Purim demands giving money to whoever asks, you can quote Rav Shmuel Kamenetzky in Kovetz Halachos who says that this is about helping the poor, not about supporting institutions. And matanot l'evyonim is about alleviating the problem of poverty, not worsening it by encouraging a lifestyle of dependency.
But there’s another opportunity here. There are very few instances where it’s possible to communicate messages or plant any kind of seeds for change. And this is a rare opportunity to do so. Don’t just apologize and say that you can’t give. Take the opportunity to communicate a message.
Now, it’s hard to get the message across, because the collectors have been taught to believe that learning Torah is the ultimate contribution to the country and that it replaces material contributions. And you probably won’t have time to go through all the sources and show that this is a total distortion of classical Judaism, or to explain that the charedi approach is simply unsustainable for the country, or to explain that havings tens of thousands of people in yeshiva is a completely new phenomenon that wasn’t required for Israel’s safety in the past and is actually very harmful.
But there is a concise way to show them that they themselves don’t really believe that learning Torah is a replacement for material and physical support. Here’s how. You ask them if their yeshivos are helping Klal Yisrael by learning Torah. They will say yes. You ask them if this is a replacement for serving in the IDF or helping Israel materially in other ways. They will say yes. Then you tell them that you are choosing to help their yeshivos in the same way: you will dedicate the merit of your Torah learning to the benefit of their yeshivos.
In my experience, this leaves them stuttering and confused. One collector eventually decided that I really was offering something better than money and thanked me, but when I told him that he should therefore ask everyone to learn for the yeshiva rather than donate money, he wasn’t sure what to say.
In addition, and especially if it’s too difficult for you to communicate the above, then you can print out the sheet below (also available as a PDF below in both Hebrew and English) and hand it to them. I recommend having a stack ready by the door.
In the past, people have argued that it’s not nice to be harsh to some naive 18-year-olds who’ve been sent by their yeshivos to collect. Well, if you have a better way to try to show them the error and danger of their ways, that’s great. But meanwhile, other 18-year-olds are going into Gaza and risking their lives, so it’s not so terrible for charedi 18 year-olds to have their way of life intellectually challenged. And the charedi way of life is an absolute threat to the survival of Israel, so there’s no time for niceties. And this could be the only opportunity to get a message across. It can be uncomfortable to challenge someone, but it is our obligation to summon up the bravery to do so.
A list of posts on the topic of IDF service is at Torah and Army: The Big Index
OK I think that the Hebrew PDF link should work now.
Brilliant. This is something that has bothered me for some time. During the height of the war, over a year ago a young Haredi schnorrer came into our minyan in South Jerusalem asking for money. (This is a common occurence.) As I was leaving shul to go to work, I simply looked him in the eye and said that I had already donated two sons to defend him and his family. He had no answer for that.