Fight Against Anti-Semitism! Rent My House!
So, our house is back up for rent. The renters who lived there were having some marriage problems and also had trouble paying the bills. Goodbye and good luck to you, old renters. Please send some new ones our way. Thank you. But hey, make sure they are not Jewish. Okay?
We have a property manager. He is a frum man. He has explained both to my husband and myself that he will not rent our home to any Jews. That is because Jews cannot be evicted for nonpayment. There needs to be a whole beis din procedure and he doesn't want to deal with all that, so he's just not going to rent to any Jews at all.
We are not happy about this. Aside from the blatant illegalities involved, we actually don't want to limit our circle of potential renters in any way. Considering the market, the time of year and the fact that the house is right in the middle of the frum neighborhood, a few blocks from all the shuls and yeshivos, not renting to Jews is just really stupid.
So yes, we have emailed him and spoken to him and made it clear that we want our home rented to anyone and we do not want him to discriminate against anyone. I am happy to evict nonpaying Jewish tenants and skip the whole beis din thing, even if it is the biggest sin on earth and even if I will burn in hell forever.
But the whole exchange got me thinking a bit about how some of these halachos end up hurting the very people they are meant to protect.
How many frum people choose specifically to not to rent to Jews or to engage in business dealings only with gentile customers, in order to avoid all the problems of botei dinim and the issurim of attempting to enforce contracts through secular courts? Is my property manager the only one? I doubt it.
There are quite a few of these laws, I think. One example is the whole thing about how all loans are cancelled in the 50th year and how this led people to stop lending money in the years right before Yovel. Hillel found a loophole and the system of pruzbul was born. Another example is how the Torah forbids charging Jews interest (issur ribis) and so Jews traditionally charged interest only to gentiles, which promoted the stereotype of the Jew as a greedy Shylock moneylender type and encouraged anti-Semitism for thousands of years.
And now this- we have impotent botei dinim some of which are corrupt and some of which are only useful to the extent that secular courts enforce their decisions. And it is understandable that people want to avoid this system altogether and would rather just conduct business with those against whom they can use traditional enforcement channels. I wouldn't want to deal with beis din either, if I could avoid it.
So why was this system implemented in the first place? Did God not foresee this eventual consequence? Is this all part of the big plan? Where is the Hillel of our days who finds loopholes and fixes broken systems? Does anyone even recognize that the system is broken?
Most importantly, where are my new renters? What are they waiting for? We will rent to anyone. Seriously. Even those moneylending Jews.
ETA: Related article