THE TRAGEDY OF THE POOR AND STRESSED-OUT JEW

Before you die, there is one place you have got to visit: Pomegranate Grocery Store. The place is gorgeous, and it can be quite an experience. But whatever you do, leave your wallet at home. I once saw a smallish piece of meat with a sticker that announced that I could be its proud owner for only $189.99. Moving along past food items, if you are a mother and want to buy a Yom Tov outfit for your three-year-old daughter, Ladiada on Clifton avenue offers a beautiful floral green blouse and skirt for $240 (before taxes). If you are a husband and would like to buy your wife a new sheitel for her birthday, you can buy a Dini for $4000 + $1000 for every additional inch of hair.

I am a staunch capitalist, and there is nothing wrong with offering to sell luxury items at extraordinary prices. Rich people are entitled to spend their money however they want, and if I were a millionaire, I would happily indulge in $100 aged steaks from Pomegranate. The problem is that large swaths of the frum community are struggling to survive, and the very existence of these luxury items within the frum world has a profoundly damaging effect.

Let me back up a little. America is a melting pot of cultures, but economic classes tend to self segregate. Rich people live in Tribeca and buy vacation homes in the Hamptons, and poor people live in Newark and certain Bronx areas. All the rest of us stratify ourselves along the various neighborhoods and communities around the country. [1] But frum Jews are different. Our society comprises large clusters of tight-knit communities, and finances are often not the determining factor deciding where a family lives. People live in Lakewood because it is an Ir Hatorah and all their friends from yeshiva live there. People live in Boro Park and Williamsburg because their entire extended family and chassidish cohorts live there. In our shuls, you can easily have a multi-million-dollar nursing home tycoon sitting shoulder to shoulder with a struggling yungerman or a middle-class electrician.

This was all fine in Lakewood until a few years ago when the numbers of wealthy people (and their adult children and sons-in-law/daughters-in-law) reached a critical mass. Suddenly there were enough rich people to support businesses that catered exclusively to mega-wealthy tastes and desires. Lakewood started spiraling. It was not acceptable to dress you kids with clothing from Carters or Marshalls, everyone on the block was wearing the newest designs from Lollypop Boutique and Surelle. In yeshiva, every recently married avrach pulled up in a spanking new (leased) luxury car that their in-laws had shtelled them as part of “support.” Wealthy parents began demanding more exciting programs from camps, and camps were happy to oblige, jacking up the entire parent body's attendance cost.

One of the most unpleasant feelings for a child is to feel different than his or her peers. Parents want their children to feel included in the class, but this becomes increasingly difficult as the richer children rachet up the financial cost of fitting in. If six kids on the block have hoverboards, your child will feel left out with his simple off-brand not-quite-Razor scooter. Parents face enormous pressure to spend money they do not have on clothing, experiences, and accessories that allow their children to feel like they are equal to their peers. The pressure is amplified in their personal life when every store they walk in sells products at unimaginably inflated prices intended for the ultra-wealthy. The Jewish magazines are brimming with advertisements for jewelry, clothing, and restaurants that your average Jewish family simply cannot afford.

Judaism imposes enormous financial costs on its participants. Years ago, I interviewed about ten frum families, carefully going through their finances to see how it all made sense. What I found, predictably, was that people are drowning. Even the most spartan lifestyle is incredibly expensive. With a father who works in nursing homes and a mother who is a playgroup morah or teacher, your average family may have six children and an annual income of 60k – 80k a year and expenses far exceeding that amount. Preparing for Yom Tov itself may eat up all the disposable income the family has, forget about the cost of tuition, camps, bussing, rent, kosher food, seminary, bar mitzvahs and chassunahs, shul membership, dentists, a few pounds of matzah and a decent lulav and esrog, car repairs, and the cost of therapies (OT/PT/Speech) and kiryah tutors for any child that needs it. Even with decent incomes, few people can afford this lifestyle. And the cost keeps going up, leading to people taking on credit card debt, finding ways to make money under the table, and relying on family, neighbors, and friends to bail them out of crushing financial situations.

A word about Government programs:

Let's talk about government programs for a moment. Rav Meir Stern of Passaic supposedly forbids his students from partaking from welfare programs as a precondition of learning in his yeshiva. It may seem harsh, but he saves his students from a deep hole that many others fall into. The reality is that huge swaths of the frum population are dependent on government programs for their existence. There are four major problems with this:

• Deliberately creating a system that relies on welfare programs is immoral: these programs were designed as a safety net, not something to be taken advantage of deliberately. If a society can only maintain themselves by relying heavily on government programs, they are misusing the system. Our chinuch system sends everyone into Kollel with the implicit intention to rely on a mix of in-law support, a bit of hustling, and government programs to survive. This is morally wrong. These programs were never created to enshrine an otherwise unsustainable form of living that avoids the workforce long after adulthood. Yeshivish people love learning, and they often preen about the sacrifices they make to maintain their lifestyle. Still, the community must acknowledge that they are leeching from the larger society to fulfill their goals. [2]

• Our non-Jewish neighbors hate us: The fact that we mix opulence with poverty engenders extremely negative feelings amongst our non-Jewish neighbors. When a woman walks into the Food Stamps office dripping in diamonds, yet asking for a handout, non-Jews don’t know how to react. What they do not understand is that the woman is, indeed, desperately poor. Still, her community's social standards force her to purchase items that every other society consider as indicators of massive wealth. If she is chassidish, her house is brimming with custom hardwood furniture (bought at full retail price at Accentuations by Design) and her breakfront has enough silver to fill a pirate chest; if she is Ashkenazi, her baby is being cuddled in a 2020 Bugaboo Chameleon with limited edition fabric and a side Doona for the car. She also has seven kids and a household income 400 percent below the poverty level. This dichotomy--extreme wealth signaling combined with extreme poverty--is not something that translates well into the surrounding community. We look like frauds, or, at best, like people who have no clue how money works. The caseworkers at these entitlement programs expect to work with clients who are struggling to survive, not ones that live in huge houses yet somehow have no money.

• These programs create a false sense of security: When children are young, parents rely on programs, and using these programs becomes a way of life. Everything seems hunky-dory, and people do not realize that they are slowly edging towards the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. One by one, the children get older and stop counting as taxable dependents. The once dependable checks from Food Stamps and HUD start getting slashed with each child that moves out. Daily existence becomes a struggle, and then right when things seem like they cannot get any worse, BOOM, parents are suddenly hit with huge new expenses. The girls start going to seminary (25k/year + 5k-8k 'living in Israel' costs), and the boys start dating and getting married. Girls cannot find shidduchim unless the parents are willing to support their sons-in-law and any equity that the parents built up rapidly disappears. Parents who have been working had 20 years of experience under their belt to hopefully allow them to increase their salary to the point where they can survive the financial maelstrom that comes with marrying off adult children. For people who have been coasting on Kollel checks, tutoring, and endless Food Stamps, they are left with no safety net. Entering the workforce at the bottom of the ladder makes little sense—they need $120k to survive, and working for $20 an hour just won't cut it. They turn to the only places they can, debt and risky high-stakes financial behavior.

• Deliberate reliance on welfare programs creates moral hazards: Desperate people will do anything to survive. After a few times of being paid off the books or having your work pay your tuition directly, it just becomes second nature. Building an illegal basement to increase rental revenue seems like a victimless crime and failing to tell your HUD caseworker about your Kollel check seems like common sense. Poor people cannot afford the luxury of honesty, and slowly but surely, our community's moral integrity gets compromised until we are reviled and hated by everyone around us.

Yes, This Is Our Fault:

To those in the system, this unfortunate reality may feel inevitable, but it is not. Like it or not, these are choices that our community is making. Amish people also live in tight-knit communities, but instead of embracing debt and material excess, they, as a community, place a substantial value on savings and frugality.[3] Like the frum community, many Amish people are successful business people and investors. But, unlike us, Amish people typically save 20 percent of their income. They also never throw things away. They buy whatever they can from second-hand stores, and If a shirt gets a hole, they patch it up instead of discarding it. The idea of a child walking into school in Lakewood or Brooklyn with a second hand patched up shirt is laughable—but only because we have decided it is something to be looked down upon. In this regard, the Amish community has set up a healthier and more sustainable system than the frum community. It doesn’t say anywhere on the luchos that you need to spend $200 on Yom Tov shoes for your one-year-old child. This is on us. We created this monster. We have no one to blame but ourselves.

It is also worth comparing our camp system to the American Christian camp system. In most of the world, any parent can send their child to a Christian summer camp while paying almost nothing. Christian summer camps are typically under the auspices of the church. For example, a local Lutheran church will build a camp under the umbrella of the larger Lutheran church system.[4] The church recognizes the religious value of sending kids to a Christian summer camp and they shift the main financial burden of attendance from the parents to the general church body. Unlike frum parents who must shoulder the entire burden of camp tuition, the Christian model allows low-income parents to send their children to camp without crushing hardship.

The frum Ashkenazi community has not adopted this model for one simple reason; we do not have a centralized authority running our denomination. Sure, we have the Agudah, who are very busy making themselves look busy by antagonizing legislators and picking fights they will lose; we also have a quasi-anonymous “Vaad” of community leaders. Still, we have nothing close to the cohesive leadership that would allow the community to aggregate funds in such a large scale manner.

Chassidim DO have something approaching the centralized leadership needed for this sort of initiative. And they do offer subsidized camp for their members. Children who go to Satmar schools can attend summer camp for about $2,000 cheaper than non-Satmar children.

Another example of other cultures that seem to be doing a better job than us is how Americans treat their adult children. We all want our children to grow up into independent, successful, and well adjusted human beings. Yet, the (Ashkenazi) frum system has created a generation of spoiled, entitled men-children who have come to expect unending handouts from their parents and in-laws. In most American communities, it is perfectly acceptable to ask children to take out loans to pay for their college education. [5] Why should struggling parents have to pay criminal amounts of money for their children to gallivant around Eretz Yisroel for a year getting fat on greasy shawarma and have drama-filled DMC’s with their Madrichot? It makes far more sense for single and independent children to take out loans and pay for the experience themselves. That approach might sound harsh, but it isn’t. It is perfectly normal. You would be teaching your child responsibility and that, surprise, things cost money. I am not saying that we should abandon our children—kicking them out of the house at 18 years old and giving them lifelong trust issues. All I am saying is that there is a balance when it comes to how much we indulge adult children, and the frum world has lost all perspective.

Why is it expected that parents must pay for their child's wedding? Most parents in America pay something for their children's wedding, but it is certainly not expected, and few parents pay for the entire event. [6] We are putting ourselves in debt to pay for a fancy wedding that no one wants to attend, to signal wealth that we don’t have, to an audience that does not care. If children wish to have a fancy wedding, they can pay for it themselves. Oh, they can't afford it? Boohoo, I guess they will have to make do with, I don’t know, an affair that they can afford, however small it is. Why are you paying Greenwald catering 20,000 dollars for some stuffed capon chicken that no one wants? You understand that this is insane.

Can anything be done:

What should you do as a member of the frum community to solve this issue: The answer is as simple as it is difficult—stop giving a schnitzel about what other people think and live within your darn means. Buy your Shabbos shoes at Target. Make hotdogs for a Yom Tov meal (guess what, your kids will like it better). Wear an $800 sheitel or a $30 tichel instead of a $6,000 monstrosity that looks massive enough to have its consciousness. Avoid people who flaunt their wealth. Be reverse-snobby, and don’t let your kids play with preppy insecure brats. Be a trendsetter. Be awesome and relaxed and friendly without buying into the whole cultural psychosis that has gripped our community. Make your kids chasunah in a backyard and put the money you saved into a savings account for when your child has his fourth kid. They might hate your guts now, but they will be plenty thankful when they need diaper money, and your check comes to the rescue.

We are all a bunch of sheep looking for someone to follow, and you, by feifing the system and forging a new path, give other people the permission they desperately need to stop caring. Yeah, it might be hard for your kids, and indeed, their social comfort should be the last thing to be sacrificed. But there is a lot that can be done before impacting them too severely. Finally, if your children cannot handle a simple lifestyle so out of whack with their peers, the solution is blindingly simple—move out of town. Outside of the tristate area, most Jewish people are far less snobby and judgmental than their in-town co-religionists. They are perfectly frum but do not care if you wear a tichel the entire Shabbos, have pizza for a Friday night meal, or adopt a dog. This whole thing is a man-made trap created by rich insecure snobs who are desperately signaling their wealth at each other to feel validated and powerful. Screw them; you are better than them anyway.

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[1] The tendency of wealth to self segregate is, by itself, not nearly a bad thing. See https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/6891.html. What is bad is when wealth and race become intertwined, and one racial group attempts to use property and zoning laws to wall off another racial group from entering their neighborhoods. America has a pretty sordid history in the matter. See https://www.vox.com/2017/1/18/14296126/white-segregated-suburb-neighborhood-cartoon )

[2] There is a lot of literature discussing whether welfare programs create unreasonable dependency amongst its recipients. The reality is complicated and counterintuitive (see https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/article/dispelling-myth-welfare-dependency for some great thoughts). But our community-wide decision to create a lifestyle for our children that requires reliance on welfare programs is far more morally troubling than an individual who inadvertently becomes trapped and reliant on welfare programs. We are exploiting a system and acting, on a systemic level, very selfishly. We are a small community compared to the rest of America, and the impact of our decision has, for now, gone mostly unnoticed. But we are taking more than our fair share—and that is wrong.

[3] See https://www.businessinsider.com/money-secrets-of-the-amish-2013-4#they-never-pay-retail-and-often-shop-secondhand-10

[4] See https://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=phd_theses pages 17-48 for an interesting historical overview of the Christian camp phenomenon.

[5] See https://www.marketwatch.com/story/more-parents-are-refusing-to-pay-for-their-kids-college-2018-08-23-7881750

[6] See https://www.brides.com/story/the-brides-parents-paying-for-wedding-outdated