The Folly of the Righteous Hochems

An article recently appeared in Tablet Magazine, a nationally published Jewish e-zine.  It was about tzedukah in Passaic New Jersey, of all places. It seems that beggars know a good place when they see one. The pickings are good in Passaic.

The author, Simon Feuerman, described the phenomenon of regular and frequent beggars who show up to receive tzedukah at his Passaic synagogue.  One of them, a seventh-generation Yerushalmi with the "visage of a holy man", said that he would be horrified to take money from someone who was not observant.  When asked about his children's future, he answered, "Ze lo bishvilanu la'avod" - "It is not for us to work".

My grandfather, Amram Yishai ben Reb Asher (z"l) spent most of his adult life in Passaic. So did his machatenum. So did his children. They were part of the wave of Jewish immigrants from Hungary who invaded the banks of the Passaic River in the late nineteenth century.

For over a century, they worked and built families and lives. They established a thriving community with many shuls. They supported their Rebbes, a few wonderful souls who ministered to the community and lived on only God knows what. Reb Asher Kollner and his descendants continued to tend to their flock, even into the 1970s.

These people, the original Jews of Passaic, would laugh and cry at today's world of beis midrash, the Yerushalmi and all those who depend on charity - the beggars.  The Jews who fled to these shores from the shtetls of Europe were both observant and hard working. They built the Jewish world we know today here in the American Diaspora.  They worked, they prayed and they gave tzedukah.  Their shuls were Orthodox. I can still remember sitting in the gallery upstairs as a very small child, with my grandmother. 

Today's Passaic Jewish world, one characterized as "frum" with Talmud Torah beis midrash and a hochem on every corner, is also now apparently filled with beggars who believe that religion and study exclude work and that tzedukah should come only from the observant.  This is a Jewish world turned upside down.  The sages worked.  So should these modern Jews.  And to refuse tzedukah because the giver is not observant (enough) - to obstruct the mitzvot of tzedukah - is this not antithetical Jewish thought? What has all this learning gained?  

If this is Orthodoxy, and if work is "not for us", then in 100 years will Passaic have a Jewish community at all?  Or will the flame die because the Orthodox have lost sight of our true tradition? Someone, please, remind these Orthodox that the world stands on three pillars. Those who rely only on one pillar are bound to topple. 

We are supposed to emulate God's attributes. Last time I checked, He labored for six days to create the world.  And, I can well remember, so too did my grandfather in his world.