Beit Midrash
- Family and Society
- Articles on Current Events
- the financial meltdown
Unemployment was the major problem of Eastern European Jewry in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In many provinces of the Jewish Pale of Settlement the Jewish unemployment rate approached an outstandingly vicious forty percent. In order to ease the pain of the unemployed the Jewish society created some types of communal work. There was a "veker" - someone whose task was to wake people for synagogue services in the early morning. There were many gabbaim in the synagogue with the work of one gabbai distributed between three or four men. The badchan - jokester and comedian who performed at weddings - was deemed to be a profession though certainly not a lucrative one. The shadchan - the matchmaker - was also considered to be a profession though most parents could hardly afford to pay any substantial fee to him or her. Because of this terrible unemployment situation Jews were considered to be luftmentschen - people who lived from the air and never really engaged in any truly productive work. This was one of the criticisms of tradition Eastern European Jewish society mounted by the non-Jewish society against the Jews and echoed by the Bund, the Labor Zionists and other Jewish groups as well. Because of the dire poverty of the Jewish society many Jews resorted to types of activities which were technically illegal under Czarist laws which officially discriminated against Jews. The statement of the rabbis that "a poor person is considered to be a dead person" certainly was a reality in Eastern European Jewish society of the time.
It is ironic that much of current unemployment is concentrated in the educated ranks of the upper middle class. Jews pushed their children into higher education at almost all cost because they saw it as a buffer and safeguard against unemployment in later life. Jewish parents and their offspring desired to enter the professions that seemingly would guarantee them financial stability for a lifetime - medicine, law, civil government service and professorships. But the current severe economic downturn has affected even those seemingly previously thought of as being immune areas of endeavor. The Talmud in discussing the issue of employment and work advances a number of different ideas regarding the matter. Rabi Meir stated that the study of Torah is paramount even over work preparation. Other rabbis had differing opinions. All agreed that enforced unemployment was a negative factor in personal lives of Jews and in the general Jewish society as a whole. I had a member in my congregation in Monsey who every Friday night would tell me how happy he was that he met that week’s payroll and families would be able to survive because of their work. Employment and unemployment are not only economic factors, dots on a graph. There is a tremendous human profit and loss involved as well. That is what makes the current dire economic and job scene so depressing. There is more than the pure bottom line involved in these matters. Human lives and families should also be considered.
