Taken to Account
| December 6, 2017
I f I look like a bank teller there’s a good reason for that. A bobbed sheitel a cream silk blouse tucked into a black or beige pencil skirt. In the winter I add a cashmere sweater or jacket. There are no fringes. No frills. No embroidery. Plain straight lines. Simple. Classic.
This reflects the person I am and the reason behind my journey from a sleek hairstyle to a bobbed sheitel. I did not turn to a Torah lifestyle because I’m a particularly spiritual person. My head is not in the clouds it’s firmly on my shoulders. I don’t look at other people and see souls whether lost or found. I see people navigating through the minutiae of life’s demands.
In short I am a bank teller.
In my job though I do more than simply disburse money and track account movements. I also deal with simple mortgages and loans. In doing so I become exposed to the chareidi community.
This is what I see: A couple comes in they could be in their early forties or late fifties. He wears a hat and black jacket often a long one down to his knees. She wears a wig: sometimes short sometimes a little longer.
“What do you do?” I ask them.
I’m never surprised by their answers. He’s a teacher or a rabbi or maybe he just learns. Within the teacher category there are a whole set of answers I needed to learn for it’s important to understand another’s culture. He might say “I’m a ram.” Or maybe he’s a meishiv or mashgiach katan or rosh chaburah.
Over time I learned the distinction between these terms. And this is important I believe. After all a teacher of high school math wouldn’t like to be confused with a helper in a preschool and an educational advisor wouldn’t want to be considered a remedial reading teacher. It’s part of the respect I’ve always shown the religious community. My colleagues may dismiss these titles as annoying terms but I view them as the vocabulary I must learn in order to understand my clientele.
Back to our couple. They’ll ask me about remortgaging their home or perhaps they’ll be taking out a large loan or a second mortgage. Usually this is because they’re marrying off a child. Occasionally it’s because of medical expenses.
Before this can be approved I must go through their accounts and make sure everything is in order. I must check that their monthly account balances and that they’ll have the means to pay off the loan. There’s nothing I hate more than to hear my colleagues phone customers and dangle loans in front of them. “Have you checked that they have the means to pay it back?” I ask them.
They shrug. Obviously they haven’t thought about this or they don’t care. Which infuriates me because I believe that every job — whether as a street cleaner or a banker or a farmer — can be done in a way that builds society or that destroys it.
Again and again when researching chareidi couples’ bank accounts I find the following: The monthly income is low. But everything balances. There are no impulse buys. Most of their monthly income I see goes to simple things: grocery bills electricity gas water. Occasionally they buy a large appliance or piece of furniture and this is often paid off in monthly installments. Their clothing expenses are not large. Entertainment is nonexistent. (Excerpted from Family First Issue 570)
