An Open Letter to Dov Hikind

[שלום_זכר]

[left](Please excuse the misplaced periods and commas. It is a formatting issue of the website.)[/left]

[left]Dear Dov,

As a Boro Park resident, I’m privy to a first row seat to the comedy playing out on the street these days in the form of a campaign between you and Nachman Caller. The negativity of both of your campaigns is hard to swallow, and I try to shield my children from the sight of adults, people who want to be our representatives no less, fighting like toddlers.

I actually have a soft spot for you, Mr. Hikind. Throughout your many years in office, you have personally helped many people, including members of my family, with legal and tactical advice, and you have always shown interest in the personal problems of individuals. But while it is true that you are a warm and loving person, and you are great in connecting to individuals, you consistently fail to address legislation that will benefit us, the average Joes on the street.

Everything you seem to care about within your legislative power, and all the issues you campaign for, is only to benefit those in power and those few who are in the leadership of kehilos and mosdos. You campaign on the platform of tuition help, while not a single achievement of yours to lower tuition has in fact trickled down to the parents who actually pay tuition. Tuition is being raised year after year. In fact, I pay now double the amount of tuition per child as I paid 7 years ago.

Transportation is another example: You worked to get free transportation for our schools. The $400 yearly charge for transportation indeed disappeared from the school’s invoice this year, but, lo and behold, a new $400 charge appeared under the name “Children Services”!

You managed to secure the TAP program for the mosdos. TAP used to be a safety net for a good source of parnasa by getting a degree. Now, that Yeshivos and kollelim deplete these programs (in most cases providing only a minor tuition discount to the parents), many young married men find themselves in the terrible disadvantage of being deprived of getting a real degree to actually make a living.

You see, Mr. Hikind. In the words of the angel in Sefer HaKuzari, your intentions are desirable, but your deeds are undesirable. I am pretty sure that you love to help your average, hard-working constituents, but you are misled by those in power to focus on issues that benefit them, while being damaging to us. We need help for tuition, but only through programs that benefit us directly, without the detour to the big pockets of the mosdos. We need housing, we need our streets clear and free from commercial bakery trucking, and we need parking. We need jobs, we need vocational training, and our children need to get a real secular education following the Common Core standard. These are just examples of our real issues and needs.

Nachman Caller, while his plans might be delusional (I simply don’t know the facts), he’s at least speaking our language. The issues that are on his mind are the real, burning problems. As long as there won’t be public checks and balance on the mosdos, none of your “solutions” are going to help the average Joe – they only help the fundraising operations of the big rebbes, and mosdos administrators, while being deleterious to us.

With a week to Election Day, I’m still undecided. I lean towards Nachman Caller because his mind is in the right place. But I hope that you’ll read this letter on Kave Shtiebel, and in the next few days, you’ll realize which issues are really important to us, and you’ll start addressing them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give you my vote on November 4th.

Sincerely,
A. Voter[/left]