Helping Our Fellow Yid With Parnassa

mi keamcha yisroel

cantoresq: I would not have believed your story except for something that happened several months ago:

My brother-in-law lives in Crown Heights and does not drive.

He and my my sister-in-law had a Lavaya in Boro Park at 9AM one morning for a relative and arrive on time in a car service. He sees the place empty and asks the owner if there is another funeral home in the vicinity and was told that there was no other (in fact, there is one with a similar sounding name a few blocks away.

So my brother-in-law asks the owner if he can use the telephone since they did not have a cell phone. The owner tell him to look for one out in the streets (there was none in the area).

End of story: They did not attend the lavaya of their relative because of the jealousy of one funeral home for the business of another.

I geuss I got carried away & my post did not way the scale of good down before

cherrybim & ames joined in ripping a larger hole in good adding to the deflation that ChanieE & cantoresq inocently inflicted, now do see what I meant?

I would challenge you all to a seperate thread where we can benafficialy discuss a the customer service and “mentshlichkeit” of the frum business world. a lot to be desired but there is a lot of hope on that. but please don’t kill agood idea. Isn’t it E-Etiquette to keep a thread in line with the opening post. If not can we do it for avinu shebashamayim? Please?

While the concept of supporting the Jewish store is nice, it doesnt factor in the major cost difference.

I can get chicken at ShopRite for $1.99/lb (rarely, but its available otherwise its $2.29-2.49/lb), whereas the same chicken is $2.99/lb at the kosher store. So if you are buying 1 package, fine, but if you are feeding your family? Over a month that makes a large difference.

If I shop at the Jewish-owned store purely because he is Jewish, can I use maaser money on the difference? After all, me shopping there is PURELY for charity reasons.

I need to first worry about my family. We live on a tight(ish) budget, and increasing our food budget even more is just not affordable. I don’t buy non essentials anyway, and for essentials I shop around for the best price.

Yiskay, I’ll ignore the implied impugning of both my veracity and my sister’s modesty. The story I related, is but one example of the lack of basic consideration one encounters in frum shopping establishments. How bad can I be expected to feel for the local grocer who refuses to accept returns for spoiled mechandise? How much pity shall I have for the clothing store that won’t exchange an item bought the previous day for a child that doesn’t fit right? Another story: This past Dec. 25th, my wife went to the local Kosher grocery to shop for Shabbat. My wife is the type of person who strikes up a conversation with virtually anyone. There is one non-Jewish cashier with whom she is rather friendly. That day this cashier was working, despite it being one of her “high holidays.” My wife said hello and wished her a happy holiday. Being a bit more comfortable around my wife, this girl told my wife that she had no holiday. The night before she was in the store until 11:00 p.m. stocking shelves, was too tired to join her family for services, and the store owner made her come to work that day since it was a Thursday and he needed her. He could care less about her holiday. Where was the basic respect for one’s employee? I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who treats others with such callousness. The Mishne in Avot says: “Mitzvah goreret mitzvah v’aveirah goreret aveirah” Most people superficially read that mishne as some sort of accounting mechanism. To me it’s far more. I look at it as a basic social contract. Act decently towards people when they need it(mitzvah) and people, not necessarily the same people, but people will act decently toward you when you need it (goreret mitzvah). The Mishne promises us that the converse is also true.

cantoresq, I would love to invite you to the post topic Customer Service in frum businesses that I created today in recognizing that the points of the lack of costomer service of many and the lack of menchlichkeit of few beg to be addressed in a way that we, you and I, that consider ourselves in the know of how to interact with the outside world. I say that because I relate to your wifes interaction with the cashier as I mainly get positive feedback when I or my wife encounter “hamoin am’. Never the less I would love to see this post continue in a positive light as the contents of the idea is deeper than meets a fast glance. read it slowly in honestly. We now have two incidents that you have related. Using these two incidents to knock down a concept that we despertely need is not justified.

We cannot let the actions of few cast a shaddow oover many. Rather let you & I shine through onto others. The light will prevail.

I can not know what you do for a livng nor do I know your religious affiliation, but there are two things I can tell you. One, that our fellow yidin accross all spectrums are suffering greatly in this economic crises and the tzidaka orginizations across all spectrums of our society are running dry and this has created a visious cycle of people falling to levels of hardship that they cannot bare. When orginazatoins like Tomchei Shabbos for example have in the past steped up to the plate for needy families. Today they report that the nature of the needy have grown to include your neighbors,freinds & relatives as well as mine, that we once considered well off.

It is unfortunate that that the we are learning how to cope with new realities & one of these realities is that a)people have taken such great financial hits that they cannot give tzidaka as they used to and B) those that perhaps are still blessed with wealth find the burden enormous to carry alone.

With that in mind I embraced the idea the author proposed. Although we might not have to give, we are all consumers and can help in that way. It goes around a verry long way/ As I said on another post. why let the yetzer hora stop us from doing this because some bad behavior on the part of some. Rather let us embrace the yetzer tov and walk into en establishment, tell you freinds, tell your relatives & tell your children what you have embraced. Tell the business owners, with a smile why it is that you are shopping there. You will be suprised at the power you have to influence many. Let alone the spiritual merits that are created and act to protect us all as a nation.

I wish you all the best regardless of your position, but I would love if you would try & overcome that negitive cycle that is so a part of socicety at large.

good luck!

I don’t think I’m painting with too broad a brush. My experiences and those of my friends tell me I’m right on the money. Indeed we are all hurting financially. Business is down everywhere, and expenses are going up. Interestingly, I haven’t seen furm owned stores reduce prices or offer specials the way larger non-Jewish owned stores do. That may be due to the superior buying power of the large stores. But, barring speciality items, I don’t feel constrained to shop in heimish stores; especially considering the number of non-Jewish lawyers the heimish velt hires when I and my frum colleagues are available.

anon for this:

As a suggestion: If you are in the store anyway, you can ask the manager to match the other non-jewish store’s advertised price.

I have not done this for food (B”H the prices are OK here, and for many things the Jewish stores don’t carry the brand/type we like), but I have for other items, sometimes they matched & I bought and sometimes not.

cantoresq: Goldbergs in Boro Park (In Town 🙂 has a “Stimulus Special” (I think thats what its called), and I think (seems to me) their prices for Purim stuff are even better than last year.