One of the victims of Corona was a Talmid Chochom from Eretz Yisrael who caught the illness in the USA and died soon after. What was he doing in the US? He was drowning in debt after having married off a few children and was trying to cover his impossible debt. "Schnorring" bi-laaz. [Recently I received an email from a "Vice President of Institutional Advancement" of a certain institution asking for money. I was thinking to myself "What a high falutin' name for 'Second Biggest Schnorrer'"].
I want to make a point that I have made before and pray that people listen and it makes a difference.
This custom of having to marry off children with apartments is INSANE. There is no way that a person can earn 2,000 shekel a month from his kollel together with his wife's 5,000 shekel from her job as a teacher and support a family of ten and also buy each child a half an apartment [they say that a good boy goes for over 700k shekels. I don't know for sure if that is the number but the numbers are HIGH]. But that is expected and is par for the course. If a person doesn't want to spend money he doesn't have and has no way of getting, save for a miracle or robbing a bank, then he will have either a child who remains single or will have to settle on "grade d" produce. והמבין יבין.
The cemeteries are filled with people who were killed by the system. Stress and anxiety kill and few things cause more stress than debts of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But before one actually dies from this, he first lives a life which is not a life. An existence where there is no peace and calm, just constant pressure to pay back the debt that is due in two days - or two days or months ago.
This also leads to the widespread phenomenon of people who borrow money and don't return the money as promised - either not on time or not at all. This is a terrible breach of ethics, an איסור גמור and undermines the basic fabric of a just society. [See Pachad Yitzchak Rosh Hashana 15 where he shows that such people compromise their very צלם אלקים. Hard to think of anything worse than that]. People sign a contract, don't honor it and bring guarantors who do the same. It is horrific. Many many people aren't bothered by this b/c we are so desensitized to lying, cheating and stealing but that just shows how low we have sunk. We SHOULD be appalled - by the insane expectations placed upon people, by the means they employ to fulfill these expectations and the suffering all of this entails for so many people.
I often feel such gratitude that when I got married there were no promises of apartments or really much of anything. My parents and in-laws were not my slaves. My father in law ע"ה felt that now that I am married, I am on my own. He made it on his own - so should I. And so it was. He didn't support me or buy me stuff [certainly not an apartment] and he could continue living life as he was accustomed without having to drive himself crazy paying for something he couldn't afford. I would have enjoyed getting an apartment together with getting a kallah but that would have lowered me morally. How can one take when he is being given because of external pressure and not with a full heart??
If parents or in-laws can afford it and they WANT to give that is one thing. GREAT! No problem there. But in the present system people are virtually forced to give and can almost never afford it.
That is something that MUST be fixed.
