Many of us believe that the biggest chilul hashem we confront as a tzibur is the continuing culture of welfare dependency in certain communities where there is a sense of entitlement to reliance on welfare payments to subsidize a lifestyle of large families where the husband is osensibly a full time learner and the wife perhaps earns a marginal income part time while also caring for a large family. This was NEVER the yiddeshe model in the alte heim but somehow is rationalized here that as long as the laws allow such welfare claims, we should grab every available dolloar because the goyim do (ans whereas they just sit around doing drugs, our welfare families are engaged in heilege limud torah etc. so that makes its “ok”). In the alte heim, there were a small number of full time learners but the large percentage of men had a parnassah and managed to conduct a balance life of limud torah and support their families. Changing this culture over the long-term should be a subject of debate. Again, this is an issue only for certain families as evident by the welfare dependency data broken down by zip code and more granular census tract reports from the NYS government.
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