Posted on December 20, 2024 by Rabbi David Katz
Last week I sent you a message about how to give tzedakah. It was brief and to the point. Based on Maimonides’ “Eight Steps of Charity” this is what I wrote: “Give before being asked. Give cheerfully; not grudgingly. Increase anonymity when giving. (Don’t look for glory; protect human dignity. Give because it is right, not on the basis of your feelings.) And help the recipient become independent, free from having to receive charity in the future.”
That was last week’s advice and it was succinctly stated. But giving is an act of self-sacrifice and that is a more complicated subject.
A number of years ago I wrote an essay on self-sacrifice. I wondered how each of us could look into our own heart to get past the obstacle of insecurity. How do we know that we aren’t sacrificing our own future well-being when we reduce our assets? How can we find faith to give whole-heartedly? What can our texts teach us?
Below is the essay I wrote. Enjoy.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Katz
Our tradition calls upon us to be generous but for many this is difficult – even when we have the means. Why so?
First, we are bombarded by requests for charity. In December our mail box is filled with envelopes from one cause or another. After every natural disaster we hear the pleas of those in need. The destitute depend upon us; all the time it seems they depend upon the kindness of strangers. How much can we afford? How much can we give?
We come up with rationales not to give. “The beggar will use the money for drugs. He should find a job like the rest of us. She probably started drinking when she was in school when she should have been studying! His case – is hopeless. You know, I gave last year to Federation and I was pretty generous! Maybe that could count for this year, too. If the Temple were running a business they’d be broke. Why should I pay for the light bills? I’ll give but I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Probably the main reason we are less generous than we ought to be comes from our very real fear that we will not have enough to sustain us in the future. Look what happened in ’08. It could happen again.
We are human and we know that the resources on this earth are limited and we must survive. Were we living in the garden of Eden, there would be no need to worry about who gives or who takes because everyone would be provided for. In the real world however, we have our physical needs and our fear runs deep that we will not have enough.
Not only that, we must figure out our long-range plans. Do we want to secure the financial future of our children and their children, too? At what level do we want to live in our retirement?
Most of us do not have actual figures in mind when we consider these matters. It is all vague and because we never know what our goals are exactly we never know how much would be too much to give specifically. Add to this that we want to enjoy ourselves too, and not miss out on life so our thoughts become more confused. Does taking a vacation in a far away place make us more likely to give or less likely? Obviously, there are criteria for how much we will decide to give that we have developed, either consciously or subconsciously.
It’s complicated. How can we harmonize the reality of “the bottom line” with the dictates of the One on High? Who can teach us how to give comfortably? Here our theology can help.
The idea of one God who created the world can help us become more generous. If God is the Creator of the world then God must be its owner – as we read in Psalms, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” And if God is the owner, then we human beings are mere tenants on this earth. So God says to us, “The land must not be sold beyond reclaim; you are but strangers resident with me.” (Lev.25:23)
Jewish economic law always took for granted an economy based on private property and in the Jewish tradition no one was ever condemned for being rich, (“If I were a rich man was and is an OK dream to have if one understands that the with wealth comes a greater responsibility to be charitable.) But the responsibility for everyone giving tzedakah was always based on the assumption that in the end, nothing is really ours. Said the Rabbis, “Whoever enjoys the goods of this world without reciting a blessing is like a thief.” (Ber. 35a) The blessing acknowledges that everything belongs to God. When we give we are merely redistributing God’s property. In Hebrew there isn’t even a word for ‘having!’ The term ‘yesh li,’ literally means “there is to me,” which is a much more tentative relationship to one’s property than “I have” or “I own.”
It would be much easier for us to give tzedakah if we acknowledged the fact that everything we have is but lent to us, that it really wasn’t ours in the first place, that when our time comes, we are not taking anything with us into the next world.
In our day to day life we have phrases and sayings that reconfirm this belief: “What comes around goes around,” or “one good turn deserves another.” And we may smile as we put that penny into the cup at the store counter and take it out the next time we are there – but however we express our thoughts, by whatever little acts we perform, it is all the same – there is a give and take in life and we are part of that cycle and we become more secure when we acknowledge this simple truth.
So when we take out our checkbooks to give money to a good cause, we must have faith that we are not risking our future, that ultimately we will not be hurt by our own self-sacrifice… that in the end we will be all right.
Just imagine what our world would be like if we had faith that self-sacrifice will not harm us… that in the end, God will provide for our needs. What would our world be like if no one were stopped by his or her fears, if each one of us likened our self to a candle that can give light to 1000 other candles without our self becoming dimmer? With faith in God, we would be more giving and our world would be transformed.
