Transcript
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There's a famous story
about a gentleman from Israel who had
some medical issues, had to go collect
saddaka to pay his bills.
So he went to do what they call
he went to America, scraped together the
money for a ticket to go collecting in
America.
Somebody hooked him up with one of the
people who has these like lists of who
the good donors are. Now, good donors
are not necessarily wealthy people.
Wealthy people sometimes are amazing
donors. Sometimes don't give. Some
wealthy people unfortunately don't give
their fair share. They should be giving
based on the Hashem gave them to. But
there's many people who don't have the
kind of money that some very rich people
have, but which do give tremendous
amounts of. And the point of this list
is essentially to help a person who's
collecting saddaka to optimize his time
in America to be able to go to addresses
of people that will give him money,
enough money to make it worth his while.
And um the person who gives the list
either does it as a or gets a percentage
of the money collected or charges a flat
fee. That's a speech in of itself.
But in any case, this gentleman gets the
list. He looks at the first um page of
the list. Manhattan. Off to Manhattan he
goes. So he gets his first address. He
knocks on the door and the owner of the
house opens the door and sees a very
non-local looking person who doesn't
speak a very good English at the door
and soon he opens the door the man says
in his broken English I collecting
saddaka and he shows him a laminated
letter from some organization or some
saying that this person is in fact
someone who needs saddaka to pay his
medical bills
and the man gets red in the face and he
starts yelling
you have go get yourself a job You come
here collecting sodaka. You think people
just have money, you know, rolling out
of you think the streets are paved with
gold. You're here in New York. You see
the streets are not paved with gold.
The house looked like a house of a
wealthy gentleman. So it seemed he had
some money, but he was not in the mood
of giving any money to this person. And
he's yelling and he's screaming and he's
cursing the guy. you get it. And the man
is just standing there listening to the
entire being bash and he's listening to
himself being washed down, being given
all kind of lovely compliments or not
such compliments. He's just standing
there and after like five or seven
minutes of this diet tribe, this like
lung mcgilla of venting and the guy's
red and purple and blue in the face, the
guy feels a little bad for the mush
who's standing here after the last seven
minutes getting his nama handed to him,
not on a silver platter, pulls out his
wallet, takes out two Benjamin Franklin,
says here's $200 for zaka. Have a good
day.
The man takes the money, thanks him, and
starts leaving.
And as he's leaving, the gentleman who
had just given $20 to duck says, "One
second, come back a second. I want to
ask you a question." What's chat? I
yelled at you. I screamed at you. And
you didn't move. You just stood there.
I mean, why didn't you get scared of me?
Why didn't you leave? Why didn't you run
away? Why did you just stand there? I
mean, the man pulled out of his pocket
his list of addresses to go to. And on
this name, it said the name, the
address, and under it said comments.
When you knock on a man's door, he will
answer. He will yell at you. He will
scream. He will curse. All written. And
then at the end,
at the end, he's going to give you $200.
So he said, "Look, I knew that that's
part of the spiel. I knew that's part of
the way it works. I have to stand there
and listen to your verbal abuse, but at
the end, it's worth my while because for
seven minutes of abuse, ultimately, I
get a decent donation for my medical
bills to pay my bills that I need to
pay.
