When Tzadaka Organizations Shamelessly Exploit Gedoilei Hador !

by Boruch Clinton

I’m not a complete stranger to the complex and demanding process required for baking hand matzah. Having spent some time years ago watching the highly professional process at the famous Montreal matzah bakery, I can tell you that serious operations would never look anything like the chaos in the image above.

The picture itself came as part of a donation appeal from a kollel. To put it mildly, I was not inspired to donate. Let me explain why.

In a real matzah bakery, water (not to mention saliva blown out the business ends of clarinets) is a carefully controlled substance. The moment the first drop touches flour, the 18 minute timer starts ticking. I can’t imagine any responsible rav allowing such a half-hearted dribbling flow out of an 8 ounce cup.

In fact, adding water to the flour is done with military precision. The Montreal bakery has a narrow alcove containing a stand on which an empty mixing bowl is placed. Both sides of the alcove contain windows opening into separate rooms. The windows are nearly always sealed with shutters.

On a signal, one of the windows is opened and a man reaches out to pour the carefully calibrated volume of flour into the bowl. The window is closed. On a second signal, the “water window” is opened and the perfect amount of water is quickly poured.

One man per window. No crowds, no children, no drama. And what’s with the shtreimel: are they baking on Shabbos?

But what I found the most disturbing was the fact that, as far as I can tell, these people dragged an elderly talmid chochom away from whatever he would have preferred to be doing to be used as a prop in a fake bake-off that’s all part of some perverse fundraising gimmick. That’s hardly כבוד התורה and it doesn’t speak well of the organizers’ priorities.

But that’s not all. A few months later, a member of the B’chol D’rachecha family sent me this image:

If you can’t make it out, that’s a bottle of wine with a label featuring its own familiar image. The claim is that the wine comes from the siyum on Shas from R’ Kanievsky’s final year and that drinking from it would guarantee (ידועה ובדוקה) salvation, income, shidduchim, and sons.

I’m told that one of those bottles could be yours for the low, low price of just $140.

That there are entire industries built on the shameless exploitation of Torah scholars’ reputations is pretty awful. But that there are enough sufficiently naive Jews out there to make those industries profitable is really sad.