To the Editors of YWN,
Walking into a prominent Five Towns shul recently, I was disturbed to find coffee cups bearing advertisements for a cash advance company. This casual commercialization of a sanctuary demands an urgent re-evaluation of what our institutions tolerate and endorse.
How is this a clean profession? The Talmud explicitly teaches that a person should always teach their child a clean and easy profession (Perek Kiddushin), emphasizing the ethical integrity of how one makes a living.
By allowing these ads on items used weekly, we are showing our kids that predatory lending is a legitimate business. Every Shabbos, our shuls serve as classrooms without walls; when children see a shul implicitly backing a high-interest lender, they learn that profiting off financial desperation is sanctioned by the community.
This normalization ignores profound historical and halachic warnings. As Rabbi Yaron Reuven has noted, whenever our people have been heavily involved in high-interest money lending, it has consistently generated intense resentment and invited great tragedy—feeding directly into the oldest antisemitic tropes, even in regions where people never interact with a Jewish community firsthand. Compounding this, there are widespread concerns that such companies extend funds without a proper Heter Iska, risking direct halachic violations of ribbis within our neighborhoods.
Our shuls are meant to be beacons of ethical clarity, not billboards for high-interest debt traps. It is time for our lay leadership to exercise sober judgment, establish strict sponsorship ethics, and ensure our institutions reflect our highest moral responsibilities.
Sincerely,
A concerned 5 Towns resident
The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of YWN. Have an opinion you would like to share? Send it to us for review.
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
12 Responses
A shul may market mitzvah opportunities. Anything else is a bizayon. The Rov, gabbai, or shammes should be responsible to stop this.
You’re right. Shuls should only take from ABA companies, nursing homes, and real estate investors. Those are all 100% kosher businesses
There’s nothing legitimate about it and Hitler himself called us predatory lenders. But when a bunch of people are making more money than they’ve ever had good luck fighting that monster they would never listen to anyone
100%. Sometimes we Yidden forget moral clarity and moral action is priority number one.
If this is an issue that’s prevalent in many shuls, I hear why you’d write a letter here.
If this is an issue with the one shul you are discussing, a more effective way of addressing the issue is to speak to the Rav, or someone in the shul.
יישר כחך, right on!
While you’re at it, maybe take action as well to keep our holy places from becoming coffee houses too?
Bringing in a parnassah and using the money to support your family, school, shul is literaly a mitzvah.
YWN might not be happy with this—I believe though that names of those companies should be called out publicly—either on this forum or others.
When are we going to learn????
Richie because we conform to a set of rules instead of living by a set of principles..once we check all the technical boxes or our lifestyle we think we are exempt from morality. Or listening to our conscience. Too much energy is focused on conformity, there’s no soul left for anything else.
If it’s sanctioned by the community and normalized, what’s the problem. But it’s good someone is addressing it.
Goygetter- using stolen and ribbis money to fund torah and mitzvos is called mitzva haba ba’aveira and is basically invalid
Is it really a treif business? We are allowed to charge interest to non jews, and there are poor people who need these loans and are too poor or have no legal papers to get credit cards. There is competition, so the market rate corresponds to risk and expense. So, as long as you are not asking mafia to help with timely loan payments, you should be fine.
It all starts with a letter to YWN (from a (the same?) five towns resident) about an ad in the 5tjt and all of a sudden they think everything in the 5 towns can change by wrong to the editors of YWN?