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!