Chaptzem Blog!      

The Hasidic Jews panhandling on the streets of Brooklyn aren't really Jewish at all. The New York Post reported that to maximize their profits, several beggars and bums have been dressing up Hasidic attire. Even though the panhandlers are not member of the Jewish community, they heard through the grape vines of the mitzvah of tsedakah, or giving charity, particularly right before Shabbat and Jewish holidays.

In the predominantly Hasidic community of Borough Park, Vincent Maurizio, who sponged ar 13th Avenue and 43rd Street for nearly two decades said, "They're good people. They're righteous people." During this year's Passover, Maurizio reported a collection of $750.

Women are also out on the streets posing as Orthodox Jews; with snoods over their hair and donning long skirts. In addition, many go as far as pushing children around in strollers in order to better blend into the neighborhood's large Hasidic families.

These perceptive vagrants even learned some main Yiddish and Hebrew terms, including "Shabbot", "shalom" and "tsedakah." Hiowever, their failure to correctly pronunciate the words could sometimes be a dead giveaway of their true identity.

Bernard Vei, an Orthodox Jew, observed that the many fraudulent beggars "go, 'Sedaka'… A lot of non-Jewish people can't pronounce the 'T' and the 'S' [in 'tsedaka'], so you know they're not Jewish."

Apparently, many Jews have given the posers the benefit of the doubt. If what the panhandlers told the Post about their take ins is true, then their business has not experienced much hurt from the bad accents.

Vei also said, "We're good people; we always give. That's the problem — they think we have all of the money in the world!"