The Jewish Beggars of Lakewood, New Jersey

NYT | MAGAZINE
By Mark Oppenheimer

Elimelech Ehrlich (seated), a beggar who travels each year from Jerusalem, talking with
students outside Beth Medrash Govoha. Credit Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times

NEW JERSEY---Once a year, Elimelech Ehrlich travels from Jerusalem to Lakewood, N.J., with a cash box and a wireless credit-card machine. Throughout town, he greets old friends, asking after marriages made since his last visit and new babies. And at every stop along the way, he asks for money. Ehrlich is a full-time beggar. For years, Ehrlich has made a circuit of yeshivas in Israel’s religious cities, like Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, offering his Yinglish patter to pious students in exchange for a few shekels. The yeshiva students may not give much, but nearly all of them give — and there are so many of them. About a mile from Beth Medrash Govoha’s campus, in a second-floor walk-up in a small, nondescript commercial building, there is a rather unusual organization called Tomchei Tzedakah. (The name means “supporters of charity.”) The organization issues between 950 and 1,100 ishurs a year, all to religious Jews.[link]