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yutorah.org has a plethora of stimulating lectures that keep my mind sharp past retirement. There's a category called machshava, or thinking, that I like as well as history. Over the years of listening to these podcasts, a few teachers stand out. Talks that approximate one I might have attended in college attract me most, those that recall Hebrew School get turned off quickly. Rarely do I feel personally involved. Often I think of some type of question, which suggests I am really listening.
This one on Tzedakah connected personally, more than most, since I made a transition in fulfilling this mitzvah about 25 years ago. I had wondered for a long time if I was right, particularly when prompted by a personally adverse Jewish communal experience, yet had never run my decision by any Rabbinic authority just assuming they are more attached to their agenda than to researching the principles of tzedakah to match how my approach conformed with traditional interpretations of our Sages or ran afoul of them. Rabbi Torczyner, a prolific yutorah.org lecturer with attention to source detail, gave cyberspace with me in it the overview that I lacked the skill to seek on my own and the trust to appoint an agent to research what I had done.
Some background. I remain observant despite taking a few lumps from leadership, a member of the synagogue, a refugee from a previous synagogue and for the most part a defector from Jewish communal activities. As Mayor Bloomberg advised the graduates at my son's commencement, I have made my best attempt to promote my own INDEPENDENCE/HONESTY/ACCOUNTABILITY/INNOVATION. In fact most of these require little special attention on my part, though at the price of kehillah sometimes. I have lived in my community for about 40 years, not exactly wandering in a Jewish desert or seeking some other setting. Like most mammals, I seek food, protection from predators, and a commitment to reproducing. Ordinarily that herd provides protection but for some it is the source of one member imposing dominance on another. I was not alpha. I also eventually found myself in the anti-herd situation of having to protect offspring. Not having too many herds around, I divested myself of the ones with the most predatory machers. I could be useful at times, an irritant at times, but never unconditionally valuable. There are other people to whom I could be unconditionally valuable.
Uneasy relations go back a long way. As a bar mitzvah era camper at an esteemed Jewish summer camp, the head counselor assembled our group the day before departure. He noted in his remarks that about 10 kids had gotten too homesick to stay. Among his remarks were that those people were not the caliber of person this camp and the Jewish institution it represents really seek. There was something inferior about them, some impediment to their being groomed as future leaders of his Movement. I didn't want to return the next year, not experiencing anything close to an Ace summer, and told our Rabbi who had a lot of his professional training invested in that camp. I became inferior too, convenient when Torah needed to be chanted at shabbos mincha but somebody whose loyalty to his Movement was not absolute. University participation in Jewish life was voluntary. Since nobody had expectations or an enduring agenda, whatever I opted to do met with Hakras haTov, something not captured since. It may be the only ongoing stretch that nobody of title berated me for resisting what they thought was their due, my fulfilling my part of their mission.
My medical degree opened many doors. It also generated some perceptions, not always true. Being in a new community, Jewish, a skilled bimah participant at my new shul from the outset, and a young person whose income could only rise and whose ability to pay day school tuition for future offspring at their day school would reinforce their agencies brought more invitations than I was used to. Camp revisited: we want you here because of what you can bring us. We just have to show you the Federation Way. So I started going to meetings which sounded a lot like what the head counselor, who by then had become a Seminary Dean, imparted. They were the umbrella organization. No challenge on my part to how that benefits a community. Every Jewish community of any size since the Middle Ages has had elders dispersing alms or stabilizing institutions. Help us raise funds at the next phone bank session. OK. They gave the two dozen of us best and brightest a script which sounded too much like a shakedown of people I didn't know to actually read, and felt the same way. I substituted my more dignified approach, that which the person who called me the previous winter had used. If somebody offers me $100, my inclination is to thank them. The script said not to, ask for $150 instead. They called husbands and wives separately. I got to call the husbands. I had a joint account, not a very full one, and my wife and I share the big expenses. I am not about to give a large amount knowing that she might be shamed into giving more than we should. As I called with no interest other than being a dutiful agent for a worthy project, I got quite an earful for resentment. And they told us younguns, never offer to send anyone their pledge card. When they called me the next year, I asked for my pledge card and got a lot of resistance from a very experienced participant. My lack of specific amount would impair their planning, he told me. I responded, then put me down for zero. The Federation will get more than that from me if they send the card so they can do even more than was planned. He really did not want to write zero on the card, so he sent it and I mailed off a check. Of our two dozen high prospects, attrition was high. By the time I waved soyonara fifteen years later, my original cohort depleted to a couple of pushy attorneys who fit in a lot better than the docs and engineers. I guess they are imprinted to see challenges as opportunities for negotiation. I saw the experience as one more manipulation in the name of Jewish leadership.
Opting out of this aspect of communal Judaism does not negate my obligation to help the poor and sustain institutions. I replaced this with a more business-like approach to tzedakah, one with more purpose than being amid the herd. I took the sum that I had donated to the umbrella, added 50% and divided six ways. On the 20th of every even numbered month, I would send a check along with a card or note expressing thanks to the special mission of each agency, sometimes with a Hebrew citation of why their work sustains Judaism. My first check went to a Camp for special needs Jewish children who, like my own son, found themselves outliers. That first year, I got four phone calls from agency heads thanking me for my good wishes and usually a hand written note added to the acknowledgement letter. As the years went on, my prosperity advanced so the frequency of checks rose to every month and the amount increased, so that the annual donation became several times what I would have considered giving to a communal umbrella that made me uneasy. Donating became a form of kevah, setting a time. It also became a time of exploration. No agency's fortunes depend on whether I give that year so from the outset I began exploring what is out there to support. Some agencies are large and impact on how we all live as Jews. The local Family Service gets the January donation each year, since rescuing the needing of our county has tzedakah priority over everything else. Children of Entitlement at our day school, a place that gave me more tzuris than any other affiliate agency when my outlier son came knocking, have other means of support. I like universities and museums, some relatively obscure. Friends of the IDF shows appreciation to young people on a difficult and dangerous mission, not always voluntarily. It is my obligation to offer them some assistance.
As time went on, checks and notes became less efficient ways of collecting, perhaps adding to overhead that detracts from what can go to beneficiaries. The notes from the directors to my note all but stopped as money collection became more mechanized. This year for the first time I yielded and went electronic. The agency heads will no longer have their Hakaras HaTov from me, only their funds. They will just have to assume my personal esteem for the good they do continues tacitly.
So how did I do? Not bad according to the principles sourced in Rabbi Torczyner's presentation. Better to give a lot of small disbursements rather than one big one. There are coins for the pushkas at minyan, emptying loose change from my pocket into my home tzedakah box, various fundraisers that crop up. It's better than a big pledge on Super Sunday and the Yom Kippur Appeal at shul. Every month has a 20th day. I have to think about what must be the best destination for that month's donation and what about that recipient adds to the mosaic of Judaism that we need to sustain. Bypassing the umbrella has its own merit, though in retrospect it might have been preferable to depart for opportunity rather than resentment. On the other hand, we have contemporary Judaism because participation has to be repackaged periodically, whether replacing a central Temple with scattered synagogues, allowing the Hasidic tzadikim to supply a spirit that was previously inadequate, and rethinking the roles of women. These days we have our Jewish None's, including a fair amount of leadership generated attrition. Our head counselor could not have been more in error. Those who were disappointed by his camp were not inferior, nor are the millenials defecting now.
Finally, the sources presented hinted that tzedakah needs to be businesslike in its efficiency and predictability but not at the expense of personal attachment. That matters a lot more than the size of the checks. Not at all the message I got from my high potential Young Leadership invitation nearly forty years back. The decades seem to have confirmed the error of that message and what might have generated more committed enthusiasm among some really talented people.
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