LETTER from Rabbi Bender about boys collecting on Purim

An important letter from Rabbi Yaakov Bender about boys collecting on Purim for extravagant prizes, from organizations they know little to nothing about.

Dear Parents,

I hope that your Purim went well.

Every Purim, many children of all stripes and ages come to our home. The boys are often collecting for some cause or another, and I am more than happy to give them $5 or $10 each, aside from some of the major campaigns. In years past, I have always encouraged the talmidim of our Yeshiva to feel the pain of others, urging them to find a way to alleviate the burdens of Yidden. One of those ways is to raise money for the indigent and poor. I felt honored to be part of a Yeshiva where hundreds of talmidim are out there every Purim helping others. Not only that, but the children themselves felt good to help others.

Lo and behold, this year, more boys visited than ever, despite the short day. As always, I asked them for whom they were collecting. Many of the children answered with the names of an organization with which I was not familiar. I asked the children what the organization does; not a single child knew. I let it go on Purim day, but on Shabbos, when one of our children came for the seudah, they showed me glitzy booklets delivered with the weekly Jewish magazines. I was stunned. Basically, children were promised prizes worth nearly 45% of the amount collected, or even more!

Please understand: For many decades, Klal Yisroel has incentivized children to collect, but the prizes were minimal—to thank them for their work. I remember, as a little child, being asked to collect for Chinuch Atzmai. Sure, we ultimately got a prize—but Chinuch Atzmai representatives went around to all the classes explaining what the organization did. We felt part of a sacred mission: to help Klal Yisroel build Torah in Eretz Yisroel.

(In terms of our Yeshiva, every spring, as part of our highly successful Bike-a-thon campaign, we include incentive prizes that cost a small fraction of the amount collected.)

This Purim, it seemed that these children were in essence collecting for themselves—e.g., if a child collected $650, he would receive a beautiful, expensive, electric scooter. (Agav, why would any parent allow their child to drive an electric, high-speed scooter? It is beyond my understanding.)

What have we come to?

Children collecting for their own bicycle, drone, robot, and who knows what else? And the organization has the chutzpah to advertise that ‘if you don’t see the item you want, call us; we will get it for you.’ Further chutzpah—that ‘if any other organization offers a better deal, we will match it.’

Here in our Yeshiva community, where we work, day and night, to inculcate middos, to care for others—to have these terrible types of collections happening? To me, such an organization seems fishy.

I want to emphasize that this is not an “anti-kids-collecting” message. On the contrary, how great it is to instill the proper chinuch in children, to walk outside their own daled amos, raising funds to help others! The Satmar Rav zt”l, who I was zocheh to observe in the Williamsburg of my youth, trained an entire generation of chassidim to look out for and actively take care of each other.

Parenthetically, our older bachurim gave away their Purim, once again, to raise over half a million dollars for total strangers, local families and individuals in real need—all without one penny of incentives. Ashreihem.

Our job as parents and mechanchim is to imbue middos tovos; not to teach our children to be greedy and busy with themselves. I understand that this started with an organization many years ago, but the prizes then were very limited.

We must not allow this to happen in the coming years.

Rabbi Yaakov Bender