A little background (based on Look Before You Leap).
Not so long ago the Charedi world addressed the plague of tragedies involving the loss of parents of young children, often after long and agonizing illnesses.
Many of the stricken families are left without even the money for basic necessities, not to mention resources to cover all the extra help required in the wake of such tragedies. About money to help the orphans marry, we need not even speak.
In virtually every case, the deceased parent had no life or health insurance. So the family is left without any recourse other than to turn to the already overburdened community, and to ask strangers to open their hearts and purses.
The current system of ad hoc appeals is not working and they came up with the idea of creating large groups of ten thousand or more families, whose members would in effect self-insure one another. The initial plan promised approximately $50,000 to every unmarried child, upon the death of a parent in one of the participating families. This is what is called Areivim (and is the basis for the ad that appears above).
In truth, this plan does not actually work from a financial standpoint. Actuaries expressed their view that the numbers did not make sense. Indeed the developers of the plan did not even have the information available upon which to make informed actuarial decisions – such as the age of those covered by the program and the number of children who would be eligible for payments. Finally, they noted a number of ways in which the plan might be in violation of Israeli insurance law. In short, this is a sophisticated tzedakah plan, not insurance.
In any case the plan has enrolled over 20,000 people.
The problem is that as I mentioned a few days ago, the Charedi world prices everything in dollars. With the decline of the dollar, the $50,000 promised is now worth only 180,000 shekel a significant decline. Therefore the Gedolim in charge have decided that the dollar will be worth no less then 4 shekel when paying out. The ad doesn't say how to figure out the $18 monthly contribution, if that is based on the official exchange rate then there is going to be a serious funds shortage in the plan.
This is like a dream world. Price things in dollars but when the dollar goes down (or up) make up an arbitrary value for the dollar. This begs the question, why not just price everything in shekels?
