Jewish Charity

JERUSALEM — So I was sit­ting at home when the door­bell rang. I opened the door, and there was a haredi (ultra-Orthodox) man with brochures and dona­tions forms. I knew what was com­ing, but he inter­jected a ques­tion that made me stop before I could shut the door:

“Are you mar­ried?” (Did he hear some­how that my girl­friend had just broken-up with me? This city can be like a small town.)

Now, for read­ers who are not famil­iar with Jew­ish — and par­tic­u­larly Israeli — cul­ture, this is an extremely-common ques­tion. When you first meet some­one, the first three ques­tions that he asks, in this order, are: “Do you want some­thing to eat?” “Are you sin­gle?” and (if you are sin­gle) “How old are you?” Then the per­son will flip through his men­tal Rolodex of sin­gle people.

So, against my bet­ter judg­ment, I shrugged and said, “No.” I was still about to shut the door when I blurted out: “For a small dona­tion, every­one at my yeshiva will pray for you for forty days — a mir­a­cle always hap­pens, and you will find your bash­ert (soul-mate)!”

Points for cre­ativ­ity. I had noth­ing else bet­ter to do, so I let him con­tinue with his speech. More than any­thing, I was curi­ous what he would say because I had never encoun­tered any­thing like this before.

Next, the man unfolded one of the brochures and showed me a pic­ture of the Old City. “Here,” he pointed, “is the [name] yeshiva, and here next to it are a bunch of Arabs! They are build­ing a lot of homes there!”

OK. I was glad he didn’t spit in my hall­way as he shouted that.

“We need money to expand our yeshiva to increase our pres­ence in the neighborhood.”

Now I understood.

“For twenty-two shekels a month (roughly $5), we will pray for you all the time to find a wife and have busi­ness suc­cess! We always get what we pray for.” (This guy must have a con­nec­tion to some­one pow­er­ful. How did he know that I was tak­ing this blog pro­fes­sional and becom­ing an online mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant as well?)

I was get­ting tired of the speech, so I lied and said that I did not have much money at the moment.

“You can donate, and just call us to can­cel the monthly debit when­ever you want! We can also start the debit when­ever you want — in two months, or what­ever is good for you.”

Then he pulled out another brochure that showed pic­tures of the two chief rab­bis — Ashke­nazi and Sephardi — in Israel along with many other promi­nent rab­bis. Below each pic­ture was a quote that endorsed the yeshiva. This guy should go into sales.

“Thank you, but I can­not right now,” I said. “Can you come back some other time?” I can still be too polite for my own, Amer­i­can good here. The haredi man thanked me, and then walked across the hall to knock on my neighbor’s door. I give him two weeks until he returns.