What Does Judaism Say about Welfare Fraud?

Marshall Breger examines the talmudic approach to the age-old problem of those who take advantage of charitable activities:

Many argue that fraud is the price of doing business, so to speak—that we cannot provide large-scale welfare, food, or health services without accepting a quantum of fraud. . . . The underlying ethical question is this: does the giver, in this case the government, have a duty to ascertain that the applicant is not a fraud? I would think so, and Jewish sources suggest the same answer.

The Talmud records a dispute between Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Yehuda over the question of due diligence in charity. If one person requests food and another requests clothing, do you examine their bona fides? The rabbis differ as to when due diligence is required. Rabbi Huna argues that a request for clothing is sufficiently personally embarrassing that we can assume no one would so “demean” himself if he did not truly need it. In contrast, Rabbi Yehuda argues that no one would beg for food if he were not truly needy, so the beggar who asks for food should not be examined [to determine if he is really in need]. We understand the law to follow Rabbi Yehuda. . . . Most fraud, however, is not connected to food.

The moral obligations of those who administer charitable funds are different. They may have a stewardship duty that individuals may not have, and their money may be limited. Funds that a public charity gives improperly to X means less money for a deserving Y. Administrators of communal funds thus have a duty of due diligence and a duty to prevent fraud. The Shulḥan Arukh, [the 16th-century code of Jewish law], says, “A person should not contribute to a charity fund unless he knows its management is reliable and knows how to conduct the fund correctly.” How much more so for government social-services programs whose funds come from taxpayers.

Read more at Moment

More about: Charity, Halakhah, Religion & Holidays, Talmud, Welfare

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF