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!