May a potential donor tell the person requesting financial help “take a job and support yourself”?
Answer:
Although it might be true that somebody ought to be finding gainful employment rather than collecting money, it is not always the place of the potential donor to point this out. Collecting money for oneself is a shameful enough experience without the added element of people telling you off.
Moreover, it is not always fair. For instance, many are unable to find any gainful employment because they were brought up without learning any basic skills that will enable them to do so. By the time that they realize their financial predicament they are often too old to begin acquiring the basic education and training they should have received in their youth. What should somebody in such a predicament actually do?
In addition, some people undergo true hardships due to medical conditions and the like, for which “getting a job” is not necessarily possible or helpful.
So, although there is sometimes room for criticism, it is not always well placed, and it is not always the place of the donor to present it.
Best wishes.
Thank you so much for your insightful and sensitive response.
Let me clarify my question. The person requesting financial help is capable of getting a job which does not require great skills or years of training. He’s intelligent and healthy but for social or psychological reasons he finds it more comfortable (and perhaps even more lucrative) to collect tzadaka monies. (In one particular case the collector wanted to purchase an apartment for his son, and it had to be in Yerushalayim!)
I am thinking of the Gemora in Bava Basra (110a) that teaches that a person should be prepared to do any kind of work in order to avoid receiving charity. Rav Kahana taught that a person should “skin a carcass, even in public, and refrain from dependency on others.” The Rashbam explains that there is no shame or Chilul Hashem in doing so. Having a job is in no way lowly. The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De’ah 255:1) rules that even an honored Torah scholar who became poor should take a job – even a lowly one – so as to refrain from receiving tzedaka.
Assuming the reality is that the collector could and should be supporting himself, am I required to give him my tzedaka monies?
Thank you again.
Indeed, we have spoken about this subject in a recent artile which you can find here: https://dinonline.org/2014/08/22/poverty-and-the-poverty-line-in-torah-law/.
Even after your clarification, and even given the assumption that the person is in the wrong for opting to collect rather than to work, it is not clear that you shouldn’t give him money. As you note, the reason he isn’t going to work is because of social or psychological reasons. These might the skewed, but they are still factors that are hard to ignore. Moreover, if you simply refuse to give money, this will surely not make him rethink his decision to refrain from working; he will simply move on to the next donor.
I would perhaps give him a contribution, but at the same time open up the subject, ask him why he doesn’t go to work and earn an honorable living as the Torah wishes him to, and explain that perhaps he should consult with a rabbi etc. who might be able to help him in this field.
Best wishes again.
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