Not So Honest Kars-4-Kids-4-God

The first time I heard the ubiquitous 1877-Kars-4-Kids radio ads, I knew where this was headed. Who solicits donations for “kids” “… please help a kid today” … without saying who was to benefit? Which kids? In Brazilian slums? Mentally disabled kids in the Appalachians? Crack babies in New Orleans?

If this fine organization was aimed at such obviously suffering populations, it probably would have said so. I guess they didn’t want to be explicit about just whom they would help. Maybe they feared you would not like their target population, or the way they offered to help. So they left it vague. They’ll just help … kids. Who doesn’t like kids?

A couple of years ago I looked this charitable organization up on the internet and learned an important fact: it was based in Lakewood, NJ. We in the Jewish world know that can only mean one thing. Lakewood is a heavily ultra-Orthodox town full of yeshivas. I’m going to guess that the way Kars-4-Kids helps kids is … by sending them to yeshiva! What could be better help than the Torah? And sure enough, their tax filings list among their major initiative: “Private school tuition assistance for children whose vulnerability requires transfer from the peer influences of their public schools.”

At the time I tried to interest my friends in Jewish journalism about this, but they weren’t too attracted, for whatever reason. (Not naming names, but you know who you are.) Sorry to hear that. But glad to hear that the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was interested. Last week they wrote about the organization and its track record, which includes significant fines for deceiving donors in Oregon and Pennsylvania. Check out the article here

Kars-4-Kids (and its related arms “Joy for Our Kids” and “Oorah” [which means “awaken”] is a relatively big charity. In the last 5 years, they report taking in more than $102 million. Last year, they gave out more than $19 million in tuition and more than $600,000 in scholarships, of course only to Orthodox programs.

The Star-Tribune quotes the executive director, Eliyohu Mintz, as saying that 1) there was no time in the 60-second radio ads to explain which “kids” would benefit from the donations, and 2) it should not matter anyway, since it is good to help any kid. Why should anyone be so cynical about helping kids?

I have no doubt this group does good work, within their own narrow definitions of “good” and “work.” I sincerely doubt that these folks are personally enriching themselves. None of them is taking this money for Hampton’s vacations and the like.

But I cannot escape the strong sense that this is sheer deception. Total *geneivat daat, *stealing the minds of those whose gifts they are soliciting! If you’re proud of your work, say what it is. But as a charity, if you won’t say whom you’re helping, I have to conclude that you don’t want me to know. I have to conclude that you want to liberate money from benighted people who would never have chosen to donate to yeshiva scholarships and direct it, Barukh Hashem, to where it will do the most good.

All well intentioned people must fight the temptation to do good work with deceptive means! There is no such thing as lying for the sake of the truth. I’m sorry, that’s not worthy of the Torah. As the Kotzker Rebbe said: You can counterfeit anything except the truth.

One last side point: the economics of Jewish day school education in the liberal world are brutal. We cannot make it work except on the shoulders of the hugely affluent. We often look admiringly at the ultra-Orthodox and wonder how they get all those kids through school. I’ve always guessed it is by paying teachers low salaries. Occasionally it might also involve other kinds of exploitation.