Tzedakah (Charity) in Israel

What if you salary does not get paid?

Posted by admin under Disposable Income, Getting By In Israel, Poverty in Israel, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Unemployment, What can THEY do

There is a lot in this blog about “poverty”. It almost exclusively revolves around not having enough to pay the bills. Lack of food, heat, clothing, the usual stuff.

Well, what happens when someone’s salary does not get paid on time? In better economies there is enough left at the end of the month to “put something away for a rainy day”. In Israel however that, for the most part, is not possible. The vast majority of the population lives from hand to mouth. What then?

That is not a simple question. As can be imagined, if someone skips a deposit in the bank, life can get pretty messy when there is no cushion available.

This of course brings up the issue of the VERY URGENT need to improve the economic system in Israel to allow for such contingencies.

Torah? Of course! Making a Living? OF COURSE!!!

Posted by admin under Uncategorized

This article by Jonathan Rosenblum strikes a very deep cord of how a “TRUE” Torah life should be lived. Mr. Rosenblum’s description of the vision of Dr. Bernard Lander’s Z”L for the Jewish people speaks to the it should be in a truly Torah world. Enjoy!

About ten years ago, I escorted Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, then a first term MK, on a week-long visit to the Torah community in America. He toured Ner Israel in Baltimore with Rabbi Naftoli Neuberger, zt”l, spent Shabbos in Lawrence, visited Lakewood and the major yeshivos of Brooklyn, and sat for more than an hour each with Rav Pam, zt”l, and, yblcht”a, the Novominsker Rebbe.

There was one other figure I felt he had to meet: Rabbi Dr. Bernard Lander, the founder of Touro College. Dr. Lander and Steinitz sat together in the back of the car, as we drove from Far Rockaway to new campus of Lander College for Men in Kew Garden Hills and back. Dr. Lander alternately charmed the visiting MK and fielded calls from Berlin, Moscow, and Paris. Over the space of two hours, the nearly blind octogenarian was busy working with officials in all three locales on opening new campuses. He was also occupied with a Touro graduation later that afternoon. It was a vintage Dr. Lander performance, and Steinitz was suitably impressed.

A year later, Dr. Lander and I sat late on Motzaei Shabbos in a tiny diner in Kew Garden Hills. “What does a runner do as he approaches the finish line?” he asked me. “He runs faster,” I replied. “Precisely,” said Dr. Lander.

He never stopped running. At the time of his passing at 94, Touro encompassed over thirty campuses, including three osteopathic medical schools he built and the newly acquired New York Medical College, a leading biomedical research institute; campuses for Jewish and pre-professional studies in Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Los Angeles, Miami Beach, and Jerusalem and several in the New York area; and Yeshiva Ohr Chaim in Kew Garden Hills, under the leadership of his son Rabbi Doniel Lander. Many of those campuses were opened up in the last decade – each with Dr. Lander’s intense involvement. No longer able to read, he kept the entire Touro empire stored in his mind. (His doctor once quipped, “Dr. Lander your eyesight is lousy, but your vision is great.”)

Somehow Dr. Lander managed to bring all this into being with comparatively little philanthropic support. One of the few talents he lacked was for fundraising. But he possessed a remarkable ability to connect to the needs of many different communities and provide them with the education they needed. (Two Touro campuses – a school of General Studies and one of osteopathy — are located in Harlem.) His knowledge of New York’s various ethnic groups, gained as a young sociologist, who played a major role on Mayor LaGuardia’s Committee on Unity, extended far beyond the Jewish community.

He will rank not only as one of the major Jewish educators of the twentieth century, but as a pioneer in many fields of general education. He was one of the first to recognize the demand for American business education overseas, opening a business school in Moscow as Russia emerged from Communism. Touro started one of the first programs for physicians assistants in the early 1970s and became a major provider in health care education. He understood the potential of long-distance learning, overseeing the creation of one of the best such programs in the world, which Touro eventually sold for $190,000,000.

A voracious reader, until he lost his eyesight, Dr. Lander had a knack for turning every bit of information he absorbed into a practical educational idea. But he was not bookish. He made friends easily and everywhere. He knew how to listen, and he mined his friends and contacts for new information and ideas as well.

One could not be long in Dr. Lander’s presence without being overwhelmed by his intellect and his energy. Until the last few months, he was constantly jetting between farflung campuses (in economy class until he turned ninety.) But the gifts with which Hashem blessed him were not employed for his own benefit; he lived a life of great simplicity.

The fruits of his enterprise were immediately poured back into new projects initiated as part of his vision for the Jewish people. From the late 1960s, he identified the college campus as the crematorium of American Jewry. His original vision of Touro College as the first in a series of institutions that would attract marginally affiliated Jewish youth with a program offering both secular and Jewish studies (a Kollel was part of the institution almost from its inception) never fully materialized.

But Dr. Lander’s appetite for creating programs to strengthen Jewry had been whetted. Financial viability was never a test for any of the Jewish institutions. Small campuses were created in Miami Beach and Los Angeles out of a desire to reverse the migration of Jewish youth to the tri-state area. Programs in Moscow, Berlin, and Paris were designed to provide Jewish studies to underserved communities.

The major institutions to which Dr. Lander’s name is attached – the Flatbush campus of Lander College, Lander College for Men, and Lander College for Women in Manhattan — sought to provide Orthodox students with the educational tools necessary to earn a decent livelihood in an environment free of heresy or hedonism.

Though he was a musmach of Rabbi Yitzchok Elchonon Seminary and a long-time officer of American Mizrahi, the greatest beneficiary of Dr. Lander commitment to Torah Im Parnassah was the chareidi community. As Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein points out, he did everything possible to accommodate the sensitivities of the chareidi community in creating the Flatbush campus – not grudgingly, but eagerly. He provided the education that enabled hundreds of women to support their husbands’ full-time learning.

Dr. Lander also created Machon L’Parnassah to provide vocational training to the chassidic community of Brooklyn. From the first time I met him, he was constantly seeking ways of doing more for the Torah community in Israel.

He derived boundless joy in recent years from the Bnot Batya program, under which he provided a free education at Lander College for Women to young women from the FSU. Not only did secure the student visas and pay for the education; he also created special small classes for these young women to aid their transition. The graduates – most of whom had only minimal backgrounds – could have passed for Bais Yaakov graduates by the end of their studies.

A forthcoming biography will tell the remarkable story of this remarkable man.

The Art of Giving

Posted by admin under Disposable Income, Perspective, Self Improvement, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Torah, Tzedakah, What can "I" do

Israel’s shame as Holocaust victims die in poverty

Posted by admin under Getting By In Israel, Perspective, Poverty in Israel, Social Justice, What can THEY do

Jobs and a Living Wage

Posted by admin under Disposable Income, Getting By In Israel, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, What can THEY do

What the Israelis need is two things.  Jobs and a living wage.

The bottom line is that in order to curb poverty the economical environment must be able to support people in a normal fashion.  I know many people who work two, sometimes three jobs and are just get by.

I know someone was working 15 sometimes 16 or more hours a day to make ends meet.  All is going well until one of his full-time jobs, when I say one, I mean one of eight hours, and then continuing on to the second 8 hour job, and that first 8 hour job failed to pay salaries.  That put the specific family into a situation where there was literally no milk in the fridge, nor the few shekels it would take to buy some.

Although it is said that Henry Ford was an anti-Semite, one thing that he said within his vision of life in America was that everyone should be able to make a living wage, and that living wage should afford him the automobile for his transportation.  That living wage is something that is lacking in Israel today.

The minimum wage in Israel today is about 19 shekels an hour.  If you do the math, 19 shekels times 179 hours a month, you get 3401 shekels a month.  Even if two people are working at that wage, that only comes out to 6802 shekels a month.  If you live in an inexpensive neighborhood and spend only 2500 shekels a month on rent and another 2000 shekels on food you are left with 2300 shekels.  But wait you haven’t paid income or property tax yet.  Albeit that income taxes at that  level will be in a lower bracket. That still does not leave you much money to say, get to work, buy some clothes, or even have a child. Israelis need more than just commitments by government, or rather, nice visions, Israelis need  jobs and a living wage.

The Olympics and Poverty

Posted by admin under Child Poverty, Perspective, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Unemployment, What can THEY do, World Poverty

There is sometimes an awkward balance between government expenditures and poverty.  One of the central issues is should government spend on things such as the Olympics.  Is it appropriate to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on hosting an event when are people just make the door, if not within the same neighborhood, that are living under intolerable conditions of poverty.

No ado not know the particulars.  What I do know is that a group of women and organized in what is called Vancouver’s poorest postal code.  These women have asked just that question.

On the one hand I can agree, and even sympathize with these women.  How is it possible that so much money is being spent on an event that lasts such a short period of time, while the poor don’t you get to sit on the sidelines and watch?

At the same time I think it is important to realize that so many jobs are created not just during these few weeks of the Olympics, but for a long time leading up to the Olympics.  And no doubt after the Olympics as well.

And leave the issue open, for the simple reason that there is no complete solution, or rather immediate solution to poverty.  In all sides must be taken into account. Here is the link to the article which sparked the thought.

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/articles/2917

Poverty and Language Skills

Posted by admin under Child Poverty, Children, Self Improvement, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Unemployment, World Poverty

As this article in the financial Times shows there’s a direct connection between poverty and literary skills or if you will literary skills in poverty. That is well known lack of financial resources is cyclical and many aspects of life.

One of the key aspects to getting out of poverty is the ability to attain knowledge. It is knowledge that brings opportunity. The study that is highlighted in the following article shows just how pervasive the issue is.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4e7ad02-19d0-11df-af3e-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

30% of Children in Israel Live in Poverty

Posted by admin under Child Poverty, Children, Divorce, Getting By In Israel, Poverty in Israel, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Unemployment, What can THEY do

This article from the Jerusalem Post brings the statistics.  The real question of course is what is the root cause of such a high number of families,or more accurately children, that live in poverty.

The statistics are fine, but what can be done about it.  There are of course many underlying causes to poverty.  Some are environmental, some are self-inflicted, and still others are deeply rooted in emotional or psychological roots.

Here’s the article from the Jerusalem Post:

A third of the children in Israel live below the poverty line, according to data published by the National Insurance Institute on Sunday ahead of Family Day, which falls on Monday.

According to the data, a quarter of families with children – 238,200 homes out of slightly over two million – live in poverty.

The institute also divulged data about the amount of children in every family. Reportedly, 32 percent of families in Israel have only one child. A slightly smaller percentage – 31 – were found to have two children. 20 percent of families have three children and only eight percent have five or six children.

Ninety-seven percent of single parents are women, according to the institute, and 30 percent out of 130,000 families with one parent are below the poverty line.

In its statement, the institute announced that steps would be taken to introduce automatic payment of birth allowances to women, who would no longer be required to fill out forms for that purpose.

The statement also included birth rate statistics: 160,000 babies were born in Israel in 2009, among them 3,500 sets of twins and 100 sets of triplets, quadruplets and more.

Karmey Hesed Needs You!

Posted by admin under Child Poverty, Children, Poverty in Israel, Social Justice, Solutions to Poverty, Tzedakah, What can "I" do

Our usual policy, we rarely if ever ask for your assistance.  Yet today we choose to do just that.

Karmey Hesed is out there on the front lines every day helping families get by.  Whether it’s connecting the electric supply by paying off the long-overdue bill, providing money to purchase critical medications, providing emotional support to families under the stress of severe poverty, or, something as simple as putting food on the table.  Karmey Hesed is there!

Today we need you!  As the recent studies have shown, 30% of Israeli children live under poverty.  There was a recent study done that showed that all the charitable organizations in Israel put together, in the field of financial assistance such as Karmey Hesed’s, provide only 25% of the solution.

Please! Click here and donate generously.  Your donation of only a few dollars can help feed a child.

Pay off that debt!

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When finally taking the leap to get out of debt, the first thing to do is strategize.