The B'chol D'rachecha Email Digest: V. 3
A selection of some of the email generated by the last few weeks of posts
Here’s another edition of email thoughts you’ve shared with me about the most recent batch of posts. And some of my own responses.
Well begin with a response to my recent “Adding Transparency to Tzedaka Organizations:”
“I read your article and, respectfully, I think you put too much faith in the CRA’s public comments. Generally speaking those statements represent only their view of the situation which has not been tested in Court. I can tell you, having represented many charities both frum and not, that the CRA’s opinion is often coloured by a misunderstanding of the charity’s actual operations or leaps of logic based on evidence they want to see but doesn’t exist.
“With respect to your comment about overhead I think it is important to remember that the law imposes significant compliance requirements over charities in everything from fundraising to annual reporting. The costs are definitely higher when conducting operations overseas, as is the case with many frum groups. In fact, I have seen the CRA outrightly accuse an organization of having such a small overhead that it could not possibly be exercising control over its assets! All in all, I think the costs you cite are actually quite low and enable a charity to continue its work.
“The work done by many frum groups, and many non-frum and non-Jewish groups, is done Leshem Shomayim. On the whole, the frum community can be extremely proud of the work they do.”
I appreciated that note. Although I did respond that I was still having trouble understanding the operating model used by some organizations, like the one reporting 16 million dollars in "professional and accounting fees." Virtually 100% of that organization’s non-overhead expenses were gifts to other registered charities. How much asset control do you need to oversee other approved organizations?
Moving back a couple of months, one response to the litany of large-scale chilul HaShem events referenced in my “Web Search Patterns and Jewish History” article observed that, as a community, we should perhaps be spending more time trying to actively counter some of the significant moral failings in general society rather than focusing so much on our own problems.
I replied that there’s certainly value to that observation. We do have both self interest and a higher calling to fight for morality in the world around us. However, that’s only assuming we could be effective. The frum community has proven over and over again that it doesn't have the capacity to do a credible job addressing these issues in the public space. For better or for worse, we're just not good at media presentation.
A number of readers responded to “Coercion and Torah” with their own stories of having to lie about their smartphones or (in earlier times) email accounts in order to access charedi institutions.
One friend however felt that the problem was mostly superficial, as everyone really knows it’s all a “compliance-theater” performance and the lies aren’t really deceptions. But I personally feel that’s the real problem, because it goes to the core of a community’s credibility. How seriously can we take institutions (and “leaders”) who define their authority through standards that, in reality, are misleading and universally ignored fantasies? Shouldn’t Torah values stand on their own without the need for layers of dishonesty to protect them?
There was a general consensus that my observations in “Thinking About Road Safety” were less than compelling. And I had to agree: the data covering vehicle accidents in frum zipcodes just wasn’t comprehensive or clear enough to draw absolute conclusions.
But there is agreement that too many people are being hurt by bad driving. And any accident is the result of someone’s bad driving. Bad weather, road conditions, or visibility? Drive slower or not at all.
Beyond the questionable business models discussed (tangentially) in “Articulating the Obvious,” some complained about ads that co-opt Torah values for crass commercial goals. After all, is it really appropriate to use sales pitches like:
"Redeem YOURSELF. Practice self care in the form of a new wig."
And…
"And you thought shavuos was about cheesecake" (to sell steaks)
Finally, there was broad and deep support for the cheaper national name hashgachos described in “How Much Should a Chumra Cost?” But it seems that, despite the fact that most of us have plenty of evidence supporting the value of “weaker” (and less expensive) halachic standards, most of us (myself included) still stick with at least some excessive chumros. People (especially those with the initials “BC”) are weird.