Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Begging

The beadle writes:

Near the end of Shacharit this morning, as does happen on occasion, as schnorer turned up and started asking congregants for Tzedakah, some of whom gave and some didn’t – I did not for reasons that will soon become clear. Our Rav asked him who he was collecting for, to which he replied “poor people”. The Rav asked him where his paperwork was and he said that he had none, after which the Rav asked him to leave the shul and to not come back unless he had paperwork.

After davenning the arguments then started as whether or not it was right to tell him to leave. To my mind, it was 100% correct – it is the easiest thing in the world to do to get paperwork if you are genuine. There were others who believed that during the Aseret Yemei Teshuva you shouldn’t be so suspicious of people and that we shouldn’t worry that he might be a ganef – if someone asks you give, Hashem will give you the money back.

I wonder what the views of the blogosphere community are….

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