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A quiet heads-up to the Lakewood community: Adopt A Talmid is now helping families struggling with tuition including middle class families who can barely breathe under the cost.
For now, it’s available only in Lakewood and through schools that have agreed to the program’s tuition policy.
Everyone can help make this a reality by donating, sharing the program, or encouraging others to participate. Even if you need assistance yourself, you can still help spread the word. If we look out for one another, this can bring real relief to many families.
visit- adopt a talmid .org
yasher koach! I presume this site can also participate in upcoming tax free donations coming up soon.
You might also think about providing donors with choices of schools and types of students they can support. Most people don’t run businesses without knowing what is happening there, so when you help others, you need to exercise your judgment also.
And from whom do you want the tuition relief? From the rich people in our own community (it sounds almost socialist to say so), but they are already a major share of funding. From the government (i.e. from the goyim), their money comes with strings attached, and these will typically be strings we find offensive (e.g. if a boy prefers to read books rather than play sports, and has proper (by our standard) midos rather than acting macho (by their standards), and they want to therefore “transition” him into a her). We could cut costs by having cheaper, unsafe buildings, but many parents would object. We could cut the teachers’ salaries and benefits, but we would have trouble getting teachers, and as it is our community’s salaries for teachers are well below what they could earn working in the goyish economy. We should just say ברוך השם we have wonderful children and we are allowed to bring them up as Yidden, and stop complaining.
As a father of many bucherim, your intentions are noble but don’t really help anyone ,you need to understand how yeshiva budgets are structured let me explain.. imagine u had a fund that helped pay for root canals say you gave 500 toward the cost .. so now the dentist knows 500 is from there so even if i chg 1400 its really it’s only costing you 900… so it just raises the prices, like section 8 etc..
Secondly every yochid and surely every girl has numerous causes..mosdos..online..that he needs to give to for personal reasons So almost no one can or does give to neutral klal funds.. that’s why agudah torah umesorah etc,,struggle and have a limited pool of donors… stand up for the moras… raised playgroup fees, veod..The website doesn’t mention trusted names behind it. Where can their names be found?
If you look at the amount of money that we waste on unneeded campaigns and fundraisers they could easily be used productively to help people pay for Jewish Education. Like I know at least 90% of the time someone makes a hachnasas sefer torah it’s to give it to a shul that already has 7 of them in the Aron. Spending 85k to make something pretty won’t really help your parents neshama if it’s barely read from. The problem is people need to see something or they feel they wasted their money, which is lack of emuna itself. Hashem never misses a transaction. But if you sponsor eight kids to learn in Yeshiva that year I’m sure it would do a lot better for your parents
akuperman> From the government (i.e. from the goyim), their money comes with strings attached, and these will typically be strings we find offensive
I think this is exaggerated. Many schools take gov money, and most governments will be happy if your school teaches math and English. If you do that well, not just pretend and cheat, H’V, have students pass academic tests great, you should be able to push against any other agendas.
klal> This is the basics and most important expense and somehow is overlooked by our community
totally agree, we just need to make the system work for the klal – as some here mentioned, if you simply give funds to a mossad, they might use them in their ways … vouchers sound like a good idea to me – provide funds to (responsible) parents and let them choose school and conditions for payments.
Halakha always preferred unlimited competitions between teachers (neighbors can’t protest against school in a yard). Instead, we have schools instead of individual teachers, leading to vertical monopolies for ever possible derech …
rebEmes> Spending 85k to make something pretty
yes, this is why we have a mishebreach for those who pay for wine – it is easy to find sponsors to put their name on the building, harder to find who will pay for heat after that
I highly doubt you know that 90%of the time someone makes a Hanachas Sefer Torah it is to give it to a shul that has 7 in the Aaron and it will look pretty and get little use.
I have done this twice in my life. Once was to a shul in existence about 120 years whose minyanim was all over 70 years of age. They had many Sifrei Torah in the Aron, but they were old and extreme heavy tall European Sifrei Torah with the added weight of the limestone treatment of the reverse side of the klaf.
Not more than two members could be hagbah and typically only open to show two columns.
The new smaller lightweight Sefer is in constant use and better serves the needs of the congregants.The other Sefer Torah was a gift to a relatively new shul that had two borrowed Sifrei Torah, but none they owned. It was presented in time for use on Shabbos Rosh Chodesh Chanukkah (when we read from three Sifrei Torah).
None of this says not to subsidize Yeshiva tuition/costs for those who need help.
There are scholarships in my parents’ names in existence. It is not an either/or situation.Who are you to judge how a person allocates Tzedakah money? Even more so, who are you to proclaim what HaShem values more?
Remember that every Jew has a mitzvah to write a Sefer Torah. Most of us aren’t able to write it on our own, so we pay for it, and appoint a sofer as our shaliach to write it.
Also bear in mind that the majority of Sifrei Torah are NOT donated to shuls – they remain the property of the person who paid for them. They are loaned to shuls. Yes, it would be nice if it could be donated to a shul that really needs it, but sometimes there isn’t one near where someone lives – and since it’s only loaned, they want it to be close by.
That said, the celebrations often thrown during the hachnasas Sefer Torah can be over-the-top, with a lot of extra money spent on it. But that’s no different than weddings and other smachot, which has been discussed plenty already.2 more points, if u add up how much gelt the lakewood community and their relatives whom are helping put into tuition and yeshiva donations a year it’s 10 times all the other tzedakas put togethor,
I once nievly thought IF ONLY… the gevirim wud write big checks……and than came covid and stimulus and ppp.. and food boxes.. veod and billions dollars WITH A B was given just to the frumme…and in the big picture all the problems continued as is.
Now to the sefer torah.. it’s a once in a lifetime mitzvah even if there are 5 others now question let’s say this never wud take the 100grand and give ten mosdos 10g each when it trickles down how much wud you saveCould it be that the objective of this is to enable grandparents who are already helping pay their grandchildren’s tuition to donate and receive a tax deduction legally?
If you would just take a look at the laws of Charity you would see the levels for yourself instead of looking like an ignorant fool here telling me that I decided what’s more important
If you would care to just peek at the basic laws of Charity you would see the levels of importance for yourself, instead of showing off your foolish ignorance on this topic and saying I decided it. You’re even supposed to sell a physical Torah if it means paying for a kid’s tuition. That’s how important it is. Maybe you donated two nice torah’s to a place that was needed, but I’ve seen hundreds of times when it wasn’t needed. Even last year a tragedy of four boys killed in a car crash, they decided to make four new torahs instead of one. I understand the Heartstrings, but the money wasted is absurd
God, people trying to do a good thing shouldn’t post here, theres too much pessimism and anger
@Dr. Pepper ~ Curious how a brand-new organization claiming to demand transparency won’t even let us know who runs it, and whose support it has. There is also very little information about what compliance is expected from the member schools, and how this will be monitored and enforced.
@Ex-CTLawyer ~ Tizku l’Mitzvos. People love to tell everyone else how they ***should*** be spending their money. I can’t proclaim what sort of Tzedakah or Chesed Hashem values more, but I’m quite certain that the Sifrei Torah you donated are worth more than the myriad ways people find to squander wealth on status symbols.
A thought.
This allows the schools to be supported by the community while bypassing community leadership. It gives the school administration even more self-determination over whom to accept or reject and to raise and lower the standards of education (Are there even any left?) at whim.
meir > I once nievly thought IF ONLY… the gevirim wud write big checks……and than came covid and stimulus and ppp.. and food boxes.. veod and billions dollars WITH A B was given just to the frumme…and in the big picture all the problems continued as is.
Meir, there is no magic here – if you are teaching my kids, and I am teaching your kids, even if we hide incomes from the taxman, there is no new money to support both us! It is a catch-22 – Parents need to earn enough, for that they generally need to learn skills in school, but we need schools to do that …
rocky> Could it be that the objective of this is to enable grandparents who are already helping pay their grandchildren’s tuition to donate and receive a tax deduction legally?
it is an appropriate tax on grandparents who did not think that their children need to learn a trade. Maybe this chesed will give them chaim aruchim so that they can support their great-grandchilden.
n0 > This allows the schools to be supported by the community while bypassing community leadership. It gives the school administration even more self-determination over whom to accept or reject and to raise and lower the standards of education (Are there even any left?) at whim.
this is the right question. If this model allows donors to control whom (schools and students) they are supporting, this is a better way to keep schools accountable than “community leadership”. This is all going to be worked out with new federal vouchers that everyone can send their part of taxes to schools via some approved intermediatory. Will be interesting to see how this will work out.
rebEmes, you really think the Yeshovos are so over eager to overspend on campaigns? Very clearly, the old simple mailing and seasonal greetings don’t do the job anymore. When was the last time you reached out, from the goodness of your heart, to donate to some Mosdos?
The reason the guys contacting on shuls get less than the parties is precisely because of marketing.
AAQ-I really do not understand your response. My point was that very often a grandparent may want to help their children with the tuition burden. The grandparent may be at a more comfortable financial position in life (no tuition for their own kids, all children are married, they sold their house in Brooklyn for a fortune, etc.). If they send a donation directly to the school, it should only count as a tax deduction if it is independent of the parent’s legal tuition obligation. My point was, could this system somehow be a way to alleviate that issue?
Rocky, yours is a good idea. I am not disputing it. There are gemoras praising grandparents for teaching grandchildren orah or taking them to school.
I am pointing out a situation where enthusiastic working parents give their children education that doesn’t help children earn an honest living, so then the grandparents become responsible for paying tuition when their children don’t. I noticed one of my kids schools added a registration field asking for names and phones of grandparents. I don’t think it is to show them kavod, but for fundraising …
PS Is your statement true – that grandparents donations are not IRS-kosher if their grandchildren are at school? how about nephews? at the end, ale Yidden are brothers, will it count against us? Is there a specific IRS ruling on this?
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