Schnorr Radio
Most haredi radio stations keep at least 30 percent of donations they collect for the needy to themselves
Recently there has been an increasing number of fundraising drives on religious and haredi radio stations: one for an urgent transplant, another for a family in need, and a special program to raise money for a patient who must go abroad for treatment (with the hope that his plane won’t crash, Heaven forbid, because of the broadcasts from the pirate radio station asking for the money).
Last Friday I heard a deep-voiced broadcaster say to his listeners on the legal Kol Hai radio station, “The last five minutes. The gates of heaven are open. I see it from here.” I don’t know how he saw the gates of heaven opening (I think the angels covered their ears out of shame and embarrassment), but the rabbi who was with him in the station read out the phone numbers to call with sobbing, forced emotion as if he were declaring the coming of the Messiah, son of David, live on the air.
Every five seconds he urged his audience “with God’s help” to sign a direct debit form to save so-and-so, in a combination of commercialism, Judaism, and charity, a saccharine mixture of kitsch and money, fragments of Torah verses, and begging.
Nowhere in Israeli public life does Judaism sound as bad as in the serial schnorring broadcasts on haredi radio stations. If a secular person, Heaven forbid, were to hear this, he’d immediately abandon religion.
No less than 30 percent of the donations go to “cover expenses” of the radio stations. I know a holy pirate radio station that even collected 70 percent of the proceeds from the family of a liver transplant patient. (The other 30 percent they just left for themselves.) These funds are a considerable source of income for the stations, and the donations and the misery of the sick and needy are just a cover.
When people donate NIS 18 a month through direct debit from their bank account for a kidney transplant patient, a considerable amount of the money often goes to cover one of the wealthy men to whom the station belongs. Does this seem to you reasonable, fair, and religious? Covering the stations’ operating expenses is OK, but 30-40 percent up front just because the announcer promise paradise to those who donate money? I’ve heard of cheaper and more direct ways to get to paradise.
Special prayer for donors
Therefore we’ve written a special prayer. You’re invited to say “amen,” and according to important rabbis, the heavens will open to all those who open their hand:“May He who blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David, and Solomon, bless the sick haredi radio stations, legal and illegal, the holy channels everywhere, because the public will give a gift and contribute charity sympathetically and wholeheartedly on their behalf in endless fundraising broadcasts for the sick and the oppressed, the wretched souls and the charitable institutions, and because in these fundraising drives the holy stations will take insane commissions to ‘cover expenses’ in the sum of hundreds of thousands of shekels, and substantial percentages of every shekel that the public contributes to truly important goals.
“In reward for this, the public is exposed to weeping announcers and pitiful rabbis and direct debit, and in reward for the fact that the righteous fundraisers take His name in vain and the names of the great rabbis, may the Holy One Blessed Be He, be filled with compassion to restore their health, to heal them, to strengthen them, and to revive them (including all expenses and overhead, franchise fees, salaries, and bonuses) and may no planes crash near them, and may he send them speedily a complete recovery from Heaven for their 248 investors and their 365 announcers among the other sick people of Israel, a recovery of the body and a recovery of the spirit, though the six days prohibit us from crying out, may a recovery come speedily, swiftly and soon, now let us say, ‘Amen.’”
