Making it financially with less

Hershi – it sounds like you have a specific organization in mind. Care to share?

Gavra: If you get a discount on a coat, are you also considered as accepting charity? Some schools inflate their rates to “leave room to negotiate”. Besides, you can’t assume that everybody struggling isn’t paying full tuition. Perhaps the reason they are struggling is because they don’t want to bargain on schar limud. Perhaps, as the OP of the tzeddakah thread they don’t even have school age children. Putting tuition into this conversation to be able to dictate how others spend their money seems unfair to me.

If we are discussing tuition and chumras are fair play I’d say this: All those struggling and their kids aren’t in chasiddeshe yeshivas let them switch. Tuition can be in the $200 range per month per child! If they are modern they may need to dump their tv/internet, wife will need to cover her hair etc., but we “obviously” have a right to dictate others religious practices so they shouldn’t need to get tuition breaks… They may even need to move to a chasidish neighborhood and start speaking yiddish, but hey many here feel we can dictate where people live. And it’s not easy to get into some schools so they shouldn’t be picky and try the bigger ones which are a little easier even if their hashkafos don’t mesh– all in the name of savings. Many schools will accept kids that “don’t blend in” if they live in the neighborhood and the parents abide by the rules.

At the other extreme we can start discussing public school with homeschooling limudei kodesh. Where does the “dumping of chumros” stop?

Gavra: I hear you but don’t think you are being realistic. Appearances nowadays are everything rightly or wrongly (and was way back, remember the heating the empty oven pretending to bake challos story?) Even if you are technically correct our midas hachesed should surpass what others are allowed to beg for by us trying to maintain their lifestyle and not judge.

Also, tzeddakah is more complex so I probably can have it both ways. Anything I give for a mosad is tzeddakah regardless of why there’s a shortfall. And some merchants will give discounts knowing the benefactor is truly needy, however the one doing the bargaining thinks they’re only cutting into a high profit margin. It may be a form of matan beseser, but I still wouldn’t call the one asking for it the same as requesting tzeddakah from the community.

Chesed is a Jewish middah, let’s not muddy the waters by being picky on who’s deserving of our help or what they must do first. On the other hand let’s not forget to focus on job training and creation, financial planning; maybe even a babysitting co-op. And on this thread some pragmatic money-saving advice as I believe was the original intent.

Zdad: I have no clue what chumra mongering is but please don’t bother explaining it — as I mentioned before this thread is not the right venue.

Oy vey, my auto-correct made my post go haywire. It was supposed to read “beis midrash”.