At a small shul in an affluent neighborhood in Chicago there is a battered silver tzidakah box that sits in the main sanctuary. Every week the tzidakah box is brought into the Rabbis’ office and the contents are counted and transferred into a letter sized envelope that is yellowing with age. Because the shul is small and has a weak membership deeply effected by the recent economic hardships the take from the pushkah is usually modest at best. As the week goes by various people come by the shul each with their own heart breaking story in need of a hand out. Their information is taken and stored in a special file and assuming that their stories check out in the long run they are told that they are permitted to come back every other week for assistance. Very often these people are in a class called ” the working poor” a surprisingly large group of Americans that have full time jobs but due to low wages, poor benefits and the rising cost of living they are unable to feed their families. More often then not there is not enough money to help provide for these people by the end of the month. The small shul however is dying. It’s costs are outgrowing its capacity to self sustain and so they invited a small but growing minyan to rent space in their building. As time went by the two congregations began sharing daily minyanim and the question arose about what to do with the proceeds from the battered silver tzidakah box. The main congregations Rabbi maintained that the money should continue to be collected for those who have the need to feed, clothe and medicate their families. The new minyan (which acts without the council of a Rabbi) would like for the money to be split in half each congregation to do with their half as they see most fit. The new congregation would like their half to go towards the creation of their own youth group. This means that as the pushkah is passed around during davening. As each member of this young congregation slips a dollar into the box they are essentially donating fifty cents of it to themselves.
That is what charity has come to these days. Haiti is an excellent example of how we fail to understand the need for Actual charity. As one of the poorest nations on earth Haiti went about its daily business ignored by other nations. We paid no attention to the fact that 60% of their citizens had no access to health care and that almost half of all the deaths in Haiti prior to the 2010 earthquake were due to HIV and AIDS respiratory infections, meningitis and diarrheal diseases, including cholera and typhoid. But now after an extreme circumstance like the death of 20,000 Haitians and the near total ruin of the entire island, now we are paying attention and we should be but Haiti needed our help long before they suffered from an earthquake
Chase Bank is currently running a program called Chase Community Giving in which they will give five million dollars to local charities. Thousands of charities were permitted to enter but only 100 were selected for further consideration. The Family Circle, a group that pairs developmentally disabled children with non disabled teens as a method of mentoring, was the only Jewish charity to make the cut. Also making the cut was the Stella Adler Studio of Acting whose only real contribution to the world is churning out excellent actors 90% of which will go on to become professional waiters, 9% will be regular extras on shows like Law and Order and if they are very very lucky 1% that go on to be a guy like Sean Penn who gets to give a 30 second speech at the Oscars about social change after hes done riffling through the $10,000 complimentary gift basket he is given.
My point is that the fact that these two organizations can be on the same list baffles me. I think these days we have lost site of what Charity really is. Because of the amount of charitable organizations and their myriad of mission statements coupled with our ability to receive tax deductions for charitable donations we have forgotten the difference between giving charity and “Acts” of charity or to put it more simply “being charitable” and “acting charitable”. Should we vote for worthwhile charities like the Friendship Circle and post it to our Facebook? Yes of course we should but doing so doesn’t make us charitable it takes much more then the click of a “vote” button to be charitable.
I unfortunately have no solutions only random gonzoish musings about the current state of charity. I do however have a name and that name is Danny Siegel. Danny Siegel is the quiet hero of tzidakah and the man to contact if anyone is interested in truly giving.
