Jayme blogs on our February meeting

This past Sunday, February 21, our foundation came together to continue our learning process. The session started off with a guest speaker from Israel named Noam Zion. He spoke to us about Maimonides levels of tzedakah and explained to us some of the difficulties that people face when giving tzedakah. He made us realize that giving tzedakah is not always easy for many reasons. First of all, it is hard for some people to receive tzedakah because they may feel inferior and they don’t like having to rely on others. Also, the biggest question for the giver is whether or not to give anonymously. We learned about the different sides of this argument through a story about Mar Ukba. If you give anonymously then you do not attract attention to yourself and you don’t have to receive praise from anyone, while if you are not anonymous then the person might continue asking for more help than you are wanting to give or ask you to help others.

After Noam left, each of us listed three things that we think are problems in the world. Some common responses were poverty, education, Darfur, and environmental concerns. Next we split into groups and each group assessed the importance of different aspects of where we want to give our money. We talked about location, if we want to give specifically to Jews, and what we are looking for in a charity. We decided that we would like to give to a very close location to a charity that is either for Jews or non-Jews. We also want our charity to have been successful in previous tasks and it is preferable that it has been around for a while. That sums up our meeting! We are looking forward to getting our proposals back the next time we get together!

Elan blogs on our February meeting

On February 21, we had a Jewish Youth Tzedaka meeting, bare with me as I try to relay everything we did during this meeting. We had the privilege of the scholar in residence for Shearith Israel, Noam Zion come and speak to us. He is very knowledgeable in the ways of philanthropy and Tzedaka, and was a pleasure talking to him. He started out by giving us examples of what got him into tzedaka and spoke of his father’s model for giving Tzedaka. We then discussed Maimonides levels of Tzedaka as we went through the significance of each. This topic brought us to a discussion of the difficulties and beauty of giving and receiving Tzedaka. Noam (which he specifically told us to call him) handed out packets, and in these were stories of giving Tzedaka. One example was a story about Mar Ukva who was a wealthy man living in a not very wealthy town. He wanted to give Tzedaka, but for reasons we later discussed wouldn’t allow the recipient to ever know who was granting them the money. This prompted a discussion on pride vs. charity. After a long discussion and many things left on our mind, Noam left us.

Each of us then had to think of three things we would want to change in the world. The answers varied greatly from plastic waste to events in Darfur. We then discussed reasons why people wouldn’t help out, because most of these things could easily be prevented. We decided the reasons were: People are busy, they don’t want to put in the effort, relevance to their own lives, helpless, lazy, decide someone else will do it, and don’t see the personal enjoyment in it. After this activity we talked about how the proposals are coming in, and what needs to happen as they come in. This is a basic summary of our meeting, tune in next month to see how the proposal process is working out for us!