Tel-Chai Nation

The Los Angeles Times wrote about the recent arrests of several Haredi socialists in New Jersey on charges of welfare fraud:

It was a spectacle nobody in this sleepy New Jersey town would forget.

Early one Monday morning, police and FBI agents in bulletproof vests bounded up the steps of suburban townhouses and split levels, threatening to break down the doors, hauling out in handcuffs husbands and wives in the distinctive clothing of ultra-Orthodox Jews. One was a prominent rabbi and head of a synagogue.

It was the dramatic kickoff of a series of well-publicized raids that since late June have netted 26 suspects on charges of stealing $2 million in government benefits. Prosecutors say that the suspects understated their income to get free healthcare, food stamps, rental subsidies and other benefits.

All of those arrested — 13 men and 13 women — were ultra-Orthodox Jews. The charges have tapped into a well of festering hostility toward an insular and eccentric minority.

And unfortunately, but not really surprisingly, there's been some antisemitism involved in the responses to this scandal. Which only suggest those who committed such an offense aren't really against socialism, but rather, only object when Jews follow principles of socialism.

Save for that, the beef with these socialist welfare moochers wearing black hats and wigs is valid if that's what they go by, and won't get jobs. On which note:

Many young families are heavily dependent on government benefits. Couples marry and bear children young, usually in their early 20s while the fathers are full-time students in religious schools, the mothers working part-time doing office work.

With five or more children, many of them with special needs — a result attributed to women having multiple births until late in life and genetic disorders in a relatively closed population — families cannot survive without government assistance, especially to buy health insurance.

Well there's a telling clue what's wrong with the picture. The hubbies are spending too much time in school and not enough time working? Even if the wifey works full time, it's not enough to sustain a good income for the family's well being. Yet not enough seem to have what it takes to make this clear to them.

In Lakewood, 65,000 people — more than half the town’s population — are on Medicaid, the government health program for low-income families, according to state data. Lakewood has more children with two parents receiving government benefits than any other municipality in New Jersey, including large, chronically depressed cities such as Newark and Camden. A report by the Asbury Park Press found that Lakewood had received 14% of the money from a $34-million state fund for catastrophic illnesses in children, despite having only 2% of the state’s children. It also found that the town had 29 times more grant recipients than any other town in New Jersey.

Wowee, and yet they still won't work full time and worry less about yeshiva studies? What a disgrace. The Haredi socialists are the ones responsible for letting down their children on the subject of health, but one can only wonder if they're willing to be honest about that? Probably not.

In 2015, the New Jersey state controller’s office flagged the disproportionate sums of government money being absorbed by Lakewood. The town didn’t look poor by any conventional yardsticks of poverty.

“You have a family or six or seven or eight, somebody is paying the mortgage, somebody is paying the taxes, they have two cars in the driveway, they’ve got food for all the kids … and they’re reporting their total income at $10,000,’’ said Joseph Coronato, the Ocean County prosecutor who took the lead in the case. “You have to ask — what is going on here?’’

In one case unsealed by the court in June, a couple with six children are alleged to have reported their income at $39,000 per year — low enough to qualify for Medicaid — when in fact they were getting more than $1 million annually from a limited liability corporation.

Members of the religious community say that cases of deliberate fraud are rare. For the most part, they say, the couples caught up in prosecutions had failed to report money they’d gotten from parents who were either paying the tuition for children in private schools or helping with the mortgage.

“The rules are very confusing. You have to be a Talmudist to figure out which program treats gifts from family as ordinary income,” said Rabbi Moshe Weisberg, the Lakewood head of what is called the Vaad, a self-governing council for the ultra-Orthodox community.

Oh please. This sounds like their own variation on Islamic taqqiya, a subject the paper, you can be sure, would be less honest about by contrast. The Haredi community in Lakewood's not making themselves look good by resorting to weak defenses.

People most often got in trouble with their Medicaid applications, motivated by their inability to afford market-rate health insurance, which he said ran as high as $30,000 annually for a large family. Several of the families have disabled children, he noted.

“None of these people used any of this welfare money for an extravagant lifestyle. They were struggling to make ends meet and trying to pay medical bills,” said Harold Herskowitz, a businessman who runs a toy store in Lakewood. He believes the prosecutions were motivated by hostility toward the ultra-Orthodox.

“I’m the child of Holocaust survivors; I don’t appreciate Jewish people dragged out in public early in the morning,” Herskowitz said.

Is this some sort of attempt to play a victim card? Point: being victim of an abomination or related to somebody who went through the same doesn't give you free license to exploit the public's taxes, all at their expense. And there have been police raids early in the morning to deal with drug dealers who may not be violent per se, but that still doesn't make their crimes excusable. And I don't think the guy should be comparing the police raid to nazi abductions either. If the Israeli police had to do the same in Beit Shemesh after the horrific harassment of minors by a crazy bunch of insular yeshiva tribalists, then that's definitely not something to whine about. The defendants may not be leading spectacular lifestyles, but then, if that be the case, why should they by wasting the public's money and not earning their own living? Why aren't they respecting the Torah's beliefs in self-support? Now, here's where things get sad for the right reasons:

The case has tapped into a wave of hostility toward the community. Last month, somebody hung an anti-Semitic banner on a Holocaust memorial in Lakewood, and fliers were distributed on the windshields of cars with photos of those arrested under the caption, “Thieving Jews Near You.”

Oh no. If they're going to blame race, as is basically what they're doing, and not the ultra-Orthodox ideology that's built on socialism, then they're not making a proper case at all. This is precisely what the Haredi clans can use to their advantage and take attention away from the more valid issues. All that aside, here's where it gets weird:

In all of New Jersey, Lakewood had the highest concentration of Donald Trump voters in last year’s presidential election – 74.4%. With their children all in private religious schools, they are strong supporters of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary who has called for school vouchers. Charles and Seryl Kushner, the parents of Trump aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner, are benefactors of the Beth Medrash Govoha yeshiva, and the rotunda of the school’s 2-year-old main building is named for them.

If you think it's bizarre they'd vote for Trump, sure, it is. If anything, it's an embarrassment because it could make the GOP look like they have socialists backing them. And we can't let ourselves be desperate for votes and risk appeasing their insults to the intellect by allowing their welfare approach to go without objections.

“When I moved here, there were trees. Now I wake up and I’m surrounded by high-density townhouses,” said Tom Gatti, a retiree who heads a coalition of senior citizens opposing the pace of new development in Lakewood. “Anytime you try to challenge anything the ultra-Orthodox are doing, they drop the anti-Semitic card on the table.

“They are not looking to assimilate into the community; they are trying to take over,’’ Gatti said.

Yep, that's the problem too. They don't integrate.

A few of the commenters had some interesting stuff to say, such as:

What's funny in a sick way is that if this article were about Muslims then the lead would include a PC disclaimer such as "While the vast majority of Muslims in New Jersey are law-abiding citizens contributing to the prosperity of the state...." . I can hardly wait for the relies. Actually, I won't.

That's a good point. I don't expect the LA Times to be honest about what Islamists are doing on their part with welfare. Another said:

Ultra-Orthodox communities, with their extremely high birth rates and large numbers of adults not working, are utterly unsustainable. They need to develop a model of how to move forward, independently, productively, and legally. I'm Jewish and particularly disgusted when they cry "anti-Semitism" every time they're investigated.

Same here. They practically owe an apology for their galling victimology. Besides, if they seriously worked for a living, then antisemites would have less to use against them. So if they're smart, they'll start pondering that for a change, plus distancing themselves from all those pretentious spiritual leaders of theirs.

Labels: haredi corruption, Moonbattery, United States