Post-10/7 Paranoia Hitting Door-To-Door Schnorrer Industry Hardest

“I’d say three quarters of the places on my rounds now simply don’t answer.”

Jerusalem, November 7 – Trauma resulting from terrorists who went from residence to residence and slaughtered Israelis several weeks ago has adversely affected the otherwise-unrelated field of visiting homes to solicit charitable donations, professionals say. The attacks of October 7 have made Israelis wary of indicating anyone is present when an uninvited visitor knocks or rings the bell, they lamented in a series of interviews, seriously impeding the solicitors’ ability to collect funds for orphans, poor newlyweds, or unemployed fathers of large families.

Door-to-door schnorrers who collect on behalf of the indigent – or who merely claim to, according to skeptics – have found the last several weeks an unprecedented challenge in their line of work: far more residents that usual no refuse to answer the door at all, a phenomenon that the solicitors attribute to fears of deadly home invasions along the lines of the Hamas attack on October 7 that killed 1400, injured thousands more, and involved an orgy of mutilation, torture, rape, abduction, and pillage.

“It used to be that only some people would pretend not to be home, or pretend not to hear us knocking,” lamented Berel Warhaftig, brandishing a letter with the name and stamp of a prominent Rabbi “attesting” to the authenticity of the specific case for which Warhaftig attempted to collect donations the last several nights. “I know we show up when it’s dinnertime, or bedtime for the kids, or it’s just ‘not a good time right now.’ I know the story. We show up when we know people tend to be home. Not much point otherwise.”

“And sometimes it amuses me,” he continued, “the effort people make to pretend they didn’t hear me knocking or ringing, or think that I can’t hear them on the other side of the door, admonishing one another not to answer, to pretend no one’s home. We’re not fools. But that was maybe a quarter of my visits, tops. Most people are willing to listen, even if they end up giving some lame excuse for not donating. Not anymore. I’d say three quarters of the places on my rounds now simply don’t answer.”

Warhaftig’s colleague, Mosihe Schreiber, reassured himself that times will improve, both for people’s sense of safety, and for his ability to guilt them into donate. “In the meantime I’ve upped the frequency of my visits to synagogues each weekday morning,” he disclosed. “That’s a captive audience. If a place has more than one minyan, I can collect enough small change in a single place than in an entire evening’s worth of knocking on the doors of marks we’ve identified over the years.”

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