Many middle class families are finding it hard to pay their grocery bills, a number of kosher retailers told KosherToday. This was confirmed by the Met Council on Jewish Poverty and a number of other Jewish agencies that help the poor.
One Boro Park retailer said that it has become very difficult to collect outstanding bills from people “who used to pay like clock-work.” Thumbing through his ruled notebook, he pointed to people who are considered “very respectable” in the community.
The number of foreclosures in such neighborhoods as Flatbush is also said to be rising, another indicator that the recession is having a major impact on middle class Jews.
Concern is mounting that the upcoming holidays may be a difficult time for thousands of Jewish families throughout New York City. Reports from other cities also point to a significant number of middle-class Jews who find themselves in financial distress. Retailers say that they noticed an appreciable change in the buying habits of many middle class families, most notably avoiding costlier foods such as red meat or expensive fish. The Boro Park retailer said that many of his customers are “sticking to chicken and starches.”
Middle class customers have also had to face many increases in the price of meat and dairy, which by Rosh Hashanah, may be as much as 20% higher than a year ago.
(Source: KosherToday)
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11 Responses
It is very sad to see that families are strugling to put food on the table and on the other hand Kosher products cost so much more than non kosher. Why are the kosher manufacturers taking advantage of the consumers? Pick up a flyer of any supermarket and compare prices. Some products (such as meat) are more than double in price just for the hashgacha or in some cases 25% more just for a mehadrin sticker.
The other issue that the frum community will have to deal with is that we are brainwashing the boys and girls in high schools not to learn a profession to prepare them for when they get married. Who will support all these couples while they are honeymooning for the first few years and than they wake up with no profession.
i agree witgh the first comment i alsofeel that we need to stop the kolel system and put a premium on working boys with good middos and baalie chesed not discarding them as not learning and providing them with encouragement. To many people and girls are brainwashed . lets have the OU which has millions of dollars in its escrow acctt stop charging for hasgochos and pasxs along the savings to consumers. lets stop all these people from getting rich on the backs of poor yidden . In addition has anyone actually found ou t the number of frum kids in public school in brooklyn and flatbush boy will you be shocked
The main reason for all of the economic problems we are having is high gasoline and fuel prices. The only natural way to deal with this all is to do something very major about this problem. Anything and eveything else just misses the point.
Re #1, second paragraph I hear you but don’t underestimate the number of educated, working people who can’t pay the bills, and are cutting corners in many, many ways.
2, you’re going off on the same tangent. This is going to become a referendum on kollel when the real issue is that prices are going up, when salaries aren’t. I don’t know who or what’s to blame – ethanol? One political party? The other?
BH that people are realistic enough to cut corners & reduce expenses
as opposed to borrowing on credit cards & making believe they have it!
may hashem bring us all more then we need in the new coming year! “tavoh shana u’birchsaiha”
#1 is absolutely correct. and # 4 writes: “but don’t underestimate the number of educated, working people who can’t pay the bills” – many of these people are supporting more than their own households, which of course is going to drain them. as #1 explains, too many young men are brainwashed not to worry about parnasa. unless this changes, the frum community is heading for disaster. the time has come for we the people to start changing things around. parents of boys: insist they get the right education for parnasa; parents of girls: stop buying husbands for your daughters and don’t let them date boys without a concrete plan for parnasa. interesting article on this subject can be found at: http://www.jewishpress.com/content.cfm?contentid=35569&sContentid=1
tzippi, what salaries are you referring to? the non-existent salary of the young husband? or the salary that the young wife earns when a good deal of it has to go to childcare?
The problem here is not Kollel, it’s the greedy working people who overcharge for anything they can.
And the suckers who think a “mehadrin” sticker is worth the paper it’s printed on.
There are definitely better and worse quality hechsherim, but the “chassidish” ones that make up the bulk of the “sticker hechsherim” are not nearly as good as the top ones, such as OU, OK, Chof-K, CRC and Star-K. Buying them is a waste of Yiddishe gelt.
But don’t blame Kollel for that, blame the business owners, and maybe the Chassidim, who pretty much don’t have Kollel systems at all.
I agree that Kollel is not for everyone, and I push my students to ony do it if they really are willing to sacrifice and NOT live off their poor parents. (I’m the principal of a pretty big Yeshiva Gedola.)
But stop blaming Kollel for everything.
And Gold, I’d love to hear what your plan was before you got married, and if you actually make your parnassa based on your plan.
Gut voch, Turkeyneck. My plan was that my husband starting working as soon as we got married (he had a bachelors degree from Touro in Economics and Business Administration). I worked too. After our first child was born, I had the zechus to be home with her. When my other children were born, I was able to be home with them as well. We lived simply in an apartment and watched how we spent our money. There was no need to spend money on childcare from six weeks and on, and no need to send the children to camp since I was home. I am thankful to Hashem that I was able to raise my children on my own – perhaps that is why they did well in school and not one of them ever had a behavior problem in school. They grew up with the one on one attention/warmth/love that only a mother can give a child. Please read the literature out there on how crucial it is for babies to have one on one attention/warmth/love from a primary caregiver. Babies’ brains continue to develop for many months after birth and the interaction/stimulation from their caregivers shapes their emotional, physical and social development in crucial ways. (See Dr. Miriam Adahan’s article “The Abandoned Baby Syndrome”)
There are too many children today with too many developmental delays/disabilities, emotional issues, behavioral issues, etc. Is it so far fetched to think this could all stem from the fact that mothers are not home with their babies? Can someone tell me if Reb Moshe Feinstein’s wife or Reb Yakov Kaminetsky’s wife or Reb Avrohom Pam’s wife left their babies in the care of others and went out to work?
Finally, ask the teachers today in the best and worst yeshivos if the children coming into their classrooms are different than previous generations because they are growing up in homes where the father is learning and the mother is working. Are the children better behaved, do they have better midos, are they showing more respect to their teachers and their classmates?
7 and 8;
Not everyone is supporting their kids in kollel. Yet, or at all. Some people tell their kids before they start going out that as machshiv Torah as they are, they cannot fool with their kids’ futures and promise something they don’t have so the kids will have to make it on their own.
And there are stay at home mothers, or mothers who wait till they don’t have babysitting to worry about to start working again.
It’s not all about kollel! It’s about the fact that flour (hey, we cook from scratch too. I’ll give you my pizza recipe if you want. And hand grate the bricks of mozzarella cheese – you’ll save $2 a lb. and the taste is out of this world) is 3 times what it was not much more than a year ago; ditto for so many foods. Oil was on sale before Pesach of this year (!) for 3 48 oz. bottles for 5 – 6 dollars. The same store now runs these sales for 3/$10. (B”H for Walmart.) Remember those 3 dozen eggs for a dollar specials not much more than a year ago?