A reader sent me an email in which a request was made to post about going away to a hotel for Pesach. The reader wanted to know if I felt, particularly given the financial condition of the country, that going away sends the wrong message. Shouldn't that money have been used to give tzedaka more generously to help out those in financial trouble?
Last year I had a post on this topic. I've been thinking about it and here is my conclusion, pretty much what I concluded last year. It's none of my business where someone goes for Pesach, as long as I am not being asked to pay for it.
I have no idea, and I imagine that most of my readers don't either, just precisely how much money any of my friends or family have. I'm not privy to their financial information and to their bank statements. I don't know, down to the penny, what they spend on. I don't know if they are in debt or not. I also don't have the exact figures on how much they give to tzedaka. Here's what else I mostly don't know. I don't know who is actually paying for those trips to a hotel. I know of one case where a set of grandparents, generally held to be quite well off, pay for all their children and grandchildren to join them at a hotel, so the whole family can be together. I would imagine there are other cases like this. I do know that some people work in those hotels over Pesach, in various positions, reducing the cost or eliminating it altogether.
I know there are people who for health reasons simply cannot undertake the strenuous work that Pesach requires. I know there are people whose jobs/businesses become critical in the time period right before Pesach and they literally don't have the time to make Pesach. I know there are families with mixed religious levels of observance and going to a hotel is one way they can all get together. There are older people whose strength is simply not up to the task of making Pesach. There are plenty of people without family to go to and going to a hotel allows them to be with others over the yom tov. I know that there are families who consider Pesach as their vacation together for the year--they don't go away for Pesach and then also take an expensive trip at another time. In short, people have lots of varied reasons for going to a hotel for Pesach, and there are lots of ways that they pay for it.
So, to the reader who asked, this is all I'm going to say on the subject: I don't care. I choose to stay home for Pesach; others don't. That is their business.
9 comments:
"Shouldn't that money have been used to give tzedaka more generously to help out those in financial trouble?"
although we like to pick on people who go away for pesach, we can use this tzedeka argument in regard to any expense we don't (subjectively) think is important.
(this is my problem with tuition committees. e.g., why should a family that goes away for pesach but is otherwise frugal be punished in favor of a family that doesn't go away but is looser with its spending the rest of the year?)
There are many reasons to go away for Pesach, and I agree, as long as we don't pay for it, then it shouldn't matter to US how someone else decideds to spend their savings. Maybe spending money to go away is good - boosting a local economy. If no one goes away - then hotels stay empty, and then other businsesses suffer...so perhaps it isn't exactly giving Charity, but it is supporting the local economy...
Right -- doesn't bother me either. Plenty of legitimate reasons to go.
As long as they are not getting private school tuition assistance at my expense, of course. I would imagine that there are some families who pay for these kinds of trips, and who claim that parents or grandparents financed the getaway. Then they claim financial need.
No, wait -- that can't be. I am sure my imagination is running away with me here.
http://orthonomics.blogspot.com/2008/04/pesach-hotels-and-tuition-i-got-buried.html
Wrote about this last year.
Ari there are probably lots of people getting away with lots of things with tuition committees in some yeshivas. I don't think though that the majority of people going away for Pesach are the ones scamming the system. We live in NJ now and of our closer friends who are going away their parents are in truth paying for everyone to go together.
We should also remember that even though times may be hard financially in general, there are still people with money who are still making top salaries and who can afford the hotels. Why assume that if someone goes to a hotel they are reducing their money spent elsewhere and hurting schools and tzedakas?
I wrote a post about this before. It might sound whiney coming from me, but it's very hard for people like my family who are barely able to put the basics on the table, to see ads for such an overload of gashmius.
I see the plus side of going away, but I think it should be toned down a little.
Yesterday evening, Rav Hershel Schachter gave a talk entitled "Halachic Issues of the Tuition Crisis" and said some surprising things. Most notably for this conversation, he said that a family is required to refuse an offer from the grandparents to fund Pesach in a hotel, and is indeed required to ask the grandparents to apply those funds towards a donation to the yeshiva(s) before asking for any tuition assistance.
A link to the talk can be found here, and this particular statement is at 9:24 of the recording -
http://torahweb.org/audioFrameset.html#audio=rsch_032209
Rav Schachter is one of the primary poskim for modern orthodoxy Jews.
Mark
I'm glad i didn't go to that lecture
I quote from a previous comment...
"he said that a family is required to refuse an offer from the grandparents to fund Pesach in a hotel, and is indeed required to ask the grandparents to apply those funds towards a donation to the yeshiva(s) before asking for any tuition assistance."
Stuff like this makes me crazy. A grandparent who wants his/her family together for Pesach & is offering it in a hotel is not an offer of tuition. I think it would be disrespectful of a person to say to a parent/grandparent "I don't care for the gift you want to give me, and I don't want to be with you on Pesach, I want you to pay my children's tuitions."
I think it would be disrespectful of a person to say to a parent/grandparent "I don't care for the gift you want to give me, and I don't want to be with you on Pesach, I want you to pay my children's tuitions."
However, the general rule is that halacha dominates over kivud av vaem.
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