One of the questions I receive most often is about Rabbis and community support for frum fraudsters, many people think that the frum community’s support of those engaged in fraud is one of incredible hypocrisy and this can often lead to a major crisis of faith. How can I be frum, yet look to the leaders for guidance, when they themselves support corruption and are willing to receive money from fraudsters?
I too have felt the hand of the yetzer harah pushing me towards crisis of faith for faulty reasons such as fraud in the frum community. It’s a tough thing to deal with, but once you realize that most of those perpetuating the fraud are tremendous do untold amounts of chesed and give lots of money away to tzedaka, you begin to realize that the growing voice of hatred toward to the frum community is merely the yetzer harah trying to make us think that fraud is hypocrisy. In reality, without fraud (which is considered halachically ok because stealing from goyim who steal from us by making us pay for public school which we would never send our kids to) many frum institutions would not be able to exist.
Think about all of the local shteeblach that only exist because of the property tax loophole, that allows one to save thousands of dollars by merely having a shul in their basement. Do you realize how much money is put back into frum institutions from that loophole alone. Where would those poor Monsey families go to if not for those who have tremendous mesiras nefesh in building multi family homes without specific permission from the anti-semitic local government. What about those in real estate who have tremendous mesiras nefesh by building section 8 qualified homes for kollel families?
Unfortunately, there are many who to are not willing to admit their self hatred and call these baalei chesed hypocrites, not only do they point fingers of hypocrisy, but they blame Daas Torah for supporting these people who are the back bone of the frum community. It is if they don’t realize that in order to be a big baal tzedaka you must skirt around the law to do it. None of these people are violating Hashems law, all of these people are sacrificing in order to help klal yisrael.
Please stop pointing fingers and saying that fraud and hypocrisy has led to your crisis of faith. It’s sad that you cannot see through your self hatred to the beauty of these individuals.
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Think for self.
Are you telling me that you’ve succumbed to the self hatred that your yetzer harah continues to perpetuate?
Hahahahaha
It’s a shonda, really, that frum Yidden would even think that fraud against the government would be a bad thing. Galus takes a toll on us all.
Luckily the Shtetl years aren’t that far away, we still even have people who grew up in Europe who can tell you that fraud against antisemitic governments was considered a mitzvah back then. But they were on a much higher madreiga and were always being fraudulent for 100% lishmah purposes, it was never for personal gain.
You’ll gain much inner serenity by ignoring both Reform Jews who eat ham and Orthodox Jews who commit financial fraud/shtick by realizing that in both cases, they’re acting according to sincere guidance from their rabbis.
The problem with financial fraud is less halachic than societal: it creates tremendous sinas-chinam!
Half the community thinks “look at those shameless fraudsters and lazy welfare bums living off my taxes and supporting their _Idiocracy_ litters with my tuition and charity.”
The other half thinks “look at those stupid, less-holy working chumps, paying sucker-taxes and tuition and having small families because they’re too gaavehdik to take charity and welfare.”
As a per Diem accountant who worked in many Jewish and non Jewish firms I will stress that ONLY really honest people I’ve ever met were all frum.
I do not believe any of these self righteous blog bashers could hold a candle in the area of honsety to some of the frum people I met.Nor do they even try to.
So not all frum people are honest, but all honest people are frum, eh?
You may draw that conclusion if that is your inclination, but Anonymous only said what he said. You might want to learn more about the client selection process that is operating here before drawing conclusions. Then again, you might not.
I live in Bet Shemesh, Israel. I don’t know how many of you know but on election day (for local council) 8 people, all Haredim , were caught voting with someone’s else’s identity cards. An apartment was found with 160 identity cards and Haredi wigs/hats etc to use as costumes together with a list of which voting booth to go. A member of Knesset’s son was found with 30 identity cards.. people who had died voted, people who lived overseas voted, 4000 people transferred their addresses to Bet shemesh in in 4 months before the election so that they could vote (sometimes 5 families to one apartment) …
And what is the scariest thing….? That NO ONE in the Haredi world has denounced it. The Haredi candidate that was to benefit from the fraud has not had the common sense to say “I denounce these illegal actions…I would like to be voted in honestly” His public relation guys (he has many ) have not bothered to tell him that maybe he should denounce the fraud. He has hired a top shot lawyer who charges an absolute fortune (If O.J Simpson’s lawyer was available I am sure he would have hired him) and all he has to say.. “We don’t know whether there were enough fraudulent votes to make a difference to the results” The haredi newspapers ridiculed the prosecution who said that the fact that the fraud was carried out at all is of great importance. We are waiting for the Judge’s decision (tomorrow) . Wish us luck. There are so called religious people here who have absolutely no moral compass, and it is scarey
who cares, Torah doesn’t believe in elections anyway.
apparently in northern ireland they used to say..’vote early, vote often’… and there was loads of voter fraud on both sides of the religious divide…
dead people in particular were very enthusiastic to exercise their right to vote…
Most sources cite US origin for that phrase, most commonly used in connection with the city of Chicago.
Why were they in Bet Shemesh? Were they Sabras, forgive the expression? If they came from the U.S., they shouldn’t have; they would have been right at home in Chicago.
We are all frauds. The game is fraudulent; can the players help but engage in fraudulence? As a Jew nowadays, I can either engage in frum fraudulence or secular fraudulence, but either way, modern life when Jewish feels like being at the center of a tug-of-war between two unhealthy, unsatisfying, and often dysfunctional societies.
And if you think finding a balance within one standard deviation of the center between the two is a viable solution, it is not. It is, in fact, most confusing to try to straddle some semblance of both a Western and a Torah value system. And it is futile, as the erosion of progressively more Jewish movements has attested to, starting with Reform, then Conservative, and now Conservadox and the more liberal strands of Modern orthodoxy.
Be excellent to each other. And… Party on dude! For this is the entirety of man.
Hoe can you not be from when our leaders support fraud and corruption?