Isramom, Ora, two of the three families I was writing about with large numbers of children live in America, one in five towns, another in Queens and no, none of them are getting any sliding scale, government subsidies, cheap health care or beit hachlama.
And they aren't taking zedoko simply because in both cases there is a parent who trained for years for a profession where they could make a very good living. Like half a million to a million dollars a year starting without bonuses and benefits. That is NOT a rare salary for a really good doctor or lawyer in their late 40s already. And no, when you are in your 30s and earning less you don't yet have ten kids so it is easier also.
There is this fallacy about cheap health care in EY. It is not cheap by any means. If you are taking on supplementary insurance and it is all coming out of your earnings and not being paid for by your place of work, like so much of health care is in America, it costs a lot! Especially as you pay more for each child.You also earn a lot less than in America and many things here cost a lot more (think cars, appliances etc.)
One gets tax credits for children everywhere not only here in EY. In america when you make out your income tax they are called "dependents" and you get tax deductions for them.
There are many families with lots of kids (think evangelistic bible belt families, mormons and many others) in America who don't get any of the things mentioned vis a vis EY and who pay full taxes but live at the scale of their earnings and don't live off zedoko.
There is a mentality going around which many of us don't agree with and think is traditionally unjewish of living off charity. unfortunately we are already into the second generation of it and therefore it has become a "traditon"...
A friend of mine made aliyah recently, and told me what she paid for health insurance in the US. Even with Meuchedet's C plan, ours is way cheaper!
Israel has existed for more than 2 generations, and status quo is given major weight. What you are calling tzedaka is not even called tzedaka in Israel.
freidasima, where are you getting your numbers from? I'm sorry but they are not accurate for the average family.
In Israel, tuition is a fraction of the cost in the United States, as is health insurance.
If you send your kids to yeshiva in America. If you send them to public school? Then it's cheaper than the "free" school here which has so many school fees your head turns! And what about buying books which you dont have to do in many schools in America?
Compare sending kids in America to Yeshiva, let's say at $10,000 a year before any reduction, to a parent sending a kid here to a private gan. Yes a normal private gan. What does that cost? My daughter is paying NIS 3,000 a month and that is until 4 and she sends food from home. I don't see a big difference between that and yeshiva tuition. You want your kid to go to a really good school here? They have private schools too, just try the new high school at kfar hayarok which a colleague of mine's sister's son goes to. That costs a lot more than the yeshiva tuition. Sure you don't have to send to kfar hayarok or to a good yeshiva tichonit which also costs (tamiri where are you?) but you know, in america it's a choice to send to yeshiva too...
Health care, what you wrote is not what I know from my friends. Their health care was covered in a plan by their place of work. For the whole family. Including dental care. Including hospitalization. Including choosing the doctors of choice and no co payments for drugs etc. There are lots of health plans like that, you just need a good employer. Right now, with people paying for health care even with the kupa's additions, it costs more. Add to that anyone who wants private health care insurance which is almost 200 shekel a month per family member over 18 just for starters? Wow...
There is no difference between taking deductions in america and points for kids in EY and in other countries. In no place is it zedoko. It's just part of the economy. You can say that you can't live without it...on the other hand you also couldn't live in a country which taxed across the board 50%. That's the national economy, not zekodo. Zedoko is holding out your hand to beg for money from others. That's what we are talking about here.
freidasima, you are not comparing like to like. Compare a standard frum education in EY to standard frum education in the U.S. and you will see that in EY the cost is less than 1/10th.
Compare someone paying for standard insurance in EY to someone paying standard insurance in the U.S. (most people do NOT have fully paid insurance from work) and you will see that in EY the cost is a small fraction of the cost in the U.S.
Please. Do not quote as relevant the cost of high school in kfar hayarok or tuition at Yale (with or without a scholarship) or even the cost of public school in the U.S.
Yeshiva tuition in the USA is on the average before reductions around $10,000. Yeshiva tichonit here (good ones) before reductions, can easily be $800 a month including books and other things. Big difference? I don't see it....particularly in view of the fact that if you compare the average american salary and the average israeli salary.....get my point?
Health care. Kupat cholim is a percentage of your salary. Mas briut is almost 5% of your salary. If you are earning a brutto of 15,000 shekel as is your husband, the two of you are paying NIS 1500 a month or NIS 18,000 a year health care. That is just the absolute basic without adding the kupa additions. Add those additions? For a family of two working adults? Then you add on depending on age (I look at my age groups) another 200 a month. That's 20,400 a year health care. Most people in america who work get some kind of health care coverage through their job. You are telling me that those people are paying more than $6,000 a year for the basics only? Not the people I know...
Of course not every single life one could live in Israel is cheaper than any life in America. Eating out every night in Tel Aviv is more expensive than living off of rice and beans in Ohio, fully private health insurance here (as opposed to Meuchedet Adif and the like) is more expensive than Medicaid. Etc.
But for a young frum family with 4-6 kids living a middle class lifestyle, life is cheaper here. It's easier to cover the basics, and that's what makes it less likely that tzedaka will be necessary.
That family may be paying $40,000 in yeshiva tuition in the states, but the father and mother together are also earning four times as much as they are earning here. So maybe it's true in
SAHM familes where the father is a kli kodesh or a low paying wage job. But in professions? Not from what I've seen.
People move to eY for the kedusha, for many reasons, but not to live cheaper if they are professionals. And there are LOTS of frum professionals particularly among the MO/DL.
http://www.kipa.co.il/family/45504.html
I don't how good your Hebrew skills are, but here is a report about the prices of Bnei Akiva and Ezra summer camps being too expensive for many parents who will not be sending their kids this year. These are out door camps held for 2 -6 days by the main DL youth movements.
Yeshiva tuition in the USA is on the average before reductions around $10,000. Yeshiva tichonit here (good ones) before reductions, can easily be $800 a month including books and other things. Big difference? I don't see it....particularly in view of the fact that if you compare the average american salary and the average israeli salary.....get my point?
I will be paying over 7000 nis for my going into 11th grader, which doesn't include food (he leaves the house at 6:10 and comes home in the evening) or transportation. Really, not as bad as the U.S. at all where the tuition would likely be in the $15k range. This is probably around what we'll have to pay for our going into 7th grader as well (haven't received the bill yet) and the same as gan costs for those under Kindergarten (age 5-ish). While we can't compare this to what we paid in the U.S., we also don't make what we made there. In Israel it's very hard to get a tuition reduction for any reason. Very hard. It's a lot more fair, from what I can glean. You HAVE to pay. Period.
That family may be paying $40,000 in yeshiva tuition in the states, but the father and mother together are also earning four times as much as they are earning here. So maybe it's true in
SAHM familes where the father is a kli kodesh or a low paying wage job. But in professions? Not from what I've seen.
People move to eY for the kedusha, for many reasons, but not to live cheaper if they are professionals. And there are LOTS of frum professionals particularly among the MO/DL.
Again, you're talking about something very different from what other people are saying.
Gryp talked about the odds of needing tzedaka, not the odds of having a slightly better lifestyle. Professionals who are earning 15,000NIS/month each in Israel might have been able to earn $15,000 /month in America, but they wouldn't need tzedaka - whether in the form of food stamps, kimcha d'pischa, tuition subsidies or whatever else - in either country.
The people at question are professionals who are paid less (nurses, social workers, doctors in public health, etc, not top lawyers and plastic surgeons) and non-professionals. Families that would earn around 12,000 shekels/month total in Israel, or $8,000 a month in America - where are they more likely to be able to afford housing, food, clothing and tuition at a frum school for 5-6 children, and where are they more likely to need to apply for assistance?
And btw, even among professionals there are those who live in EY because it's cheaper. You're comparing a "good" yeshiva tichonit here to a $10,000 a year school in America. In America, $10,000 might (but probably wouldn't) cover high school tuition in the chassidish world or OOT (and the price for a comprable school in Israel would be around 1,000 shekel a month, not 3,000). A "good" MO high school, though? $20,000 a year if you're lucky.
I know a couple of families that went from $20,000 a month to 20,000 shekels a month and consider themselves lucky - now they find they have more money left over (in terms of buying power, anyway) after paying tuition.
As far as elementary school, I figured out more than once than what my BIL and SIL pay for one kid in NJ = what we pay for 6 kids here. I don't think they make 6 times as much money. And our kids' school is not so cheap (690 shekel a month x 12).
American yeshivos and seminaries? Disproportionately more expensive, whether in America or actually in Israel.
Schools here are subsidized to be affordable. We agree that this isn't tzedaka. By the same token, camps should be subsidized.
The semi-private elementary schools my friends send to here in Israel cost 3,000 to 6,000 shekels per child per year. But then to be fair, the elementary school the frum people I know in America send to only costs $6,000 per child per year.
degoldy, large families doesn't equal no birth control.
Secondly, there is no way a large sized family can get by these days without any tzedaka. NO way. In our community there is so many organizations and gemachim to support families, that I can't even count them. And the tuition reductions are out of hand.
Huh? I definitely know of some large families that get by without any tzedaka. And large by any standards, not just secular standards. Its called living frugally and making smart choices.
ersonally, I think it's pretty condescending to sit back and tell a struggling mother: "You made the choices you did ten or fifteen years ago, what else did you think would happen?" It seems that nobody much understands that A) society cannot run on doctors and lawyers and B) that circumstances CHANGE.
Not always 10 or 15 years ago. If a woman says "I can't handle my kids during the summer because every summer I'm nursing a newborn or very pregnant, there are very real things to do NOW to make sure that you arent pregnant or nursing a newborn NEXT summer.
How can you be so sure? Unemployment these days usually isn't a decision. If someone can not find a job and has kids who need to be in camp, then yes, absolutely I'd give tzedaka for that.
Yes, if they need to be in camp. Not if their mother decided she would rather someone else take care of her children because it's too much for her as a healthy, unemployed 30 year old to run after them.
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I'm not so sure you are halachically right in every case. I remember learning that the mitzva of tzedaka is to support a person to the standards of his former lifestyle. That doesn't mean that you Shalhevet have to support them. You can pick which tzedakas you want to give to. But that doesn't mean that it's not a mitzva for someone to fund someone's camp in that situation.
I personally only give to tzedakas that I feel the people are worse off than myself. But I know of people who are extremely wealthy and live really lavish lifestyles and are happy to give someone a better quality of life. Of course, I understand that the mitzva is on the giver, but it's not a very good thing to want to accept tzedaka.
disclaimer - please don't understand this as if I'm condoning a luxurious life style at all, but I'm just pointing out a different angle to the matter.
I wrote a whole long answer and it got erased as I got disconnected. So I will keep it short.
Three points.
1) we have had many threads comparing prices of life in EY to America and it really depends who, where, how many kids and what your lifestyle is. There are those who would earn ten times as much, three times as much, and less in America than here in EY. There are those who would pay less for their kids more for their kids, less for health care and more for health care. etc. Across the board though in general, it's only easier here for those who are willing to live on a much lower lifestyle, have much less than in America, and send their kids to charedi education which is cheaper than DL. Because there are MO schools in america which cost $5000 OOT and those which cost $40,000 (Ramaz). Depends where, what age group etc.
2) Seraph hit it on the nail. Frugality. How much is everyone's personal decision. But you don't have to take zedoko if you are healthy and can work either to earn money or to work at staying home but saving a lot of money by changing your lifestyle. The name of the game is sacrifice. If you wont, then your only recourse is charity if you want to keep up your lifestyle which includes a lifestyle of having many children.
3) Children- where in the world and how in the world did it become an acceptable norm to keep having all these children you can't pay for and live on charitable alms as if it is a norm? Why have all these kids if you can't afford to give them the basics? Just for the sake of having children? If having children just for the sake of having children is such a big mitzva then how come there were generations, when BC existed, and generations which were frum where big rabonim speaking to very frum yidden most definitely even suggested using BC - not waiting for a shayla - for couples who didn't have the money for more kids? Not to have no kids or only one or two even but at a certain point to make sure that they had enough money for food, shelter, clothing and education for the ones they had, instead of just having more and falling a burden on the tzibur's kupa? When did this change and why? Why do some of you think it is laudable to create more charity cases? Or as Seraph said, if you see that this is the problem why are you stil having more children?
No, the gedolim didn't recommend using birth control for the reason you write, and no it wasn't right to just use birth control without a heter. We have a whole long thread about that.
So, which of my children shouldn't have been born?
