Being a City of Torah is not only about Torah study; it is
also about living the values of the Torah. In this, too, the city excels. There
is an aura of Chesed that pervades the community. It is an atmosphere even noticed by The
New York Times, a newspaper not particularly friendly to Orthodox Jewry.
They ran a feature story about the generosity of individuals in the community,
noting how charitable they are despite often having modest incomes. A generosity largely due to their meticulous observance of Maaser Kesafim - tithing
their discretionary income. They are also generous with their time and deeply
committed to helping their fellow Jews.
While there are still communal controversies that
arise - such as the plague of exclusivity in schools or
the so-called Shidduch crisis, these problems are not due to
malfeasance. They are systemic flaws in an otherwise beautiful way of life - if
serving God is one's primary concern.
However, certain individuals’ behavior gives Lakewood a bad name. It’s true that the vast majority of Lakewood cannot be blamed for the sins of a few bad apples. But, unfortunately, there appear to be more bad apples than one might expect in a community that places such a high value on serving God. A culture of fraud has developed, where a few Heimishe Jews take advantage of the truly good people of Lakewood who by nature trust Heimishe Jews.
To the uninitiated, a Heimishe Jew is someone raised with the same religious Jewish values as their friends and neighbors. Someone you would find comfortable inviting into your home or being invited into theirs. Someone who s instinctively trusted. They probably Daven in the same Shul, send their children to the same schools, and actively participate in religious community projects, often donating their time and money generously.
Heimishe entrepreneurs will use that identity to attract Heimishe investors. Some of whom might invest their life savings, hoping to secure an eventual retirement nest egg. But in many cases the money taken is not invested and used to further a lavish lifestyle. When the scam gets discovered the investors find they have lost all their money. And there seems to be a lot more of this type of thing going on than ever before.
This phenomenon was described in some detail by The Real Deal from which the following excerpt was taken :
In recent months, Lakewood investors Aron Puretz and his son, Eli, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud; both received prison sentences. Fannie Mae put Lakewood-based title insurers Riverside Abstract and Madison Title on its blacklist. A sprawling investigation by the Department of Justice and the Federal Housing and Finance Agency into commercial mortgage fraud has touched the core of Lakewood…
A nursing home executive filed a lawsuit against Mark Nussbaum, a real estate attorney used by many in the community. The plaintiff sought to collect $15 million in escrow money. Some of the allegedly missing funds were linked to Borough Park real estate investor Mendel Steiner, who owned at least 4,000 units nationwide. A day after the lawsuit was filed, Steiner took his own life. He was 33 years old. Though Steiner was from Brooklyn, his death unnerved Lakewood in a way that even the federal investigations and crackdowns had not.
I am not reporting this story to cast aspersions on the Charedim of Lakewood. I am doing it to note my dismay at Charedi publications for not reporting a word of this. As far as the typical Charedi reader is concerned, fraud does not exist in the City of Torah. The Lakewood story never happened. Unless, of course, you were one of the duped investors.
Some Charedi publications have offered general warnings along
the lines of let the buyer beware. Readers were advised on how to avoid
being tricked into bad deals and warned not to trust someone juts because they are Heimish. But the fraud that prompted those warnings was never
revealed. And there were apparently many more cases like it.
The question is: How can people who are otherwise exemplary
Jews blatantly defraud others—often fellow religious Jews out of their life savings? What
kind of monster does that? And why are there so many of them? What exactly was
missing from their Chinuch? Is it just a matter of greed? Is it about keeping up with the wealthier Katzes and Cohens? Are some
people so enamored with wealth that they are willing to cheat the poor to live
the good life?
I don’t know. But if any communal blame is to be assigned,
it must be directed at the Charedi media for refusing to publish these stories. I suppose they do it to protect the reputation of the City of Torah. They may
also feel that revealing these stories serves no constructive
purpose.
But by keeping things quiet and using vague warnings about bad investments will not register with the community as well as an expose of that particular malaise would. Naming the guilty party will help enlighten people to not assume all Heimishe people can be trusted.
There is no clearer way to demonstrate these dangers exposing the people who betrayed the trust of innocent investors. If Charedi publications truly want to prevent fraud from harming innocent people again, they must stop protecting the guilty and start thinking about preventing fraud in the future. That cannot be done by hiding the truth,
