Oftentimes one will see a beggar/homeless person smoking a cigarette. You will feel a bit of revulsion when he comes over to beg for money. You will then give him only a small amount, if anything at all.
We tell ourselves, if he is so poor that he has to go begging for food money, he should stop smoking and use all that money for food and clothes. I will not give him money if he wastes it on smoking.
If one would go through a religious neighborhood, one would see avreichim buying lottery tickets just like evrybody else.
Put aside for now the argument that lottery is a tax on the poor and they should not be playing. Forget the debate whether the lottery is worthwhile or not.
I want to know why avreichim play the lottery. We hear all the time complaints how poor and underpaid avreichim are (and they are). Occassionally there is the independantly wealthy avreich or one fully supported by parents, but most are not like that. Most are dependant on the government subsidies and scrape around for extras, such as learning in Friday morning kollels, night kollels, motzei shabbos kollels, etc and need every penny they can get.
If it is true that avreichim are not paid enough to live on (and it is true, but that is the choice of lifestyle they have made), what right do they have to play the lottery?
They all will tell over the story of the Chafetz Chaim and the lottery ticket. It goes something like this: Someone came to the Chafetz Chaim with a lottery ticket and asked for a bracha to win. The Chafetz Chaim told him that if he has complete bitachon that he will win, he will. When the fellow came back a bit before the lottery, the Chafetz Chaim offered to buy the ticket for a modest amount of money. When the fellow agreed, the Chafetz Chaim said this means you do not really have bitachon. Why? Because if you had bitachon this ticket would bring you 5000 rubles in a week (let’s say 5 million dollars in todays terms for arguments sake), why would you sell it today for 200 rubles?
They will say they are providing Hashem with an opportunity to give them parnassa b’derech hateva, in a natural non-miraculous way, just by buying the minimum ticket.
But isn’t it just like the homeless guy smoking? You will not give him money because he wastes it on cigarettes. Yet avreichim go fundraising (or others go on their behalf actually), yet some of that money is thrown out regularly on lottery tickets!
