On Giving

Just say you have one or two million dollars to give away.  It was a good year and now it is time to give back; time to do some “tikkun,” improvement.  The first decision you need to make is how to best use such a goodly amount. After all, being a good entrepreneur with solid business skills, you know that giving money must also be solidly researched and well-thought.  So you begin to think of all the worthwhile charities you can donate the money to with an awareness that the money must make a real and significant difference for your people.  You want to give it to Jews. 

The next decision is how best to allocate the money; there are many worthwhile causes.  Among them are programs and activities for the infirmed.  The money could go a long way toward giving meaning to the elderly.  Israel is a possibility too.  With years at war and ongoing economic as well as frontal assaults, such an infusion of cash would give much needed money along with an unspoken statement of support.  Youth programs are certainly worthwhile.  Recreational and sports activities for children.  So many things to choose!

You could even decide to divide the money up among the many willing and noble causes.  Why not give a little to each?  The only problem with that is that he greatest effect of the donation will not be met.  A single lasting contribution by you cannot be achieved when the money is thinned out among different agencies.  What do you do?

The one area so often overlooked when philanthropists seek ways to contribute to the welfare of the Jewish people is through the synagogue.  Odd, isn’t it?  In the past twenty years memorials and museums have been constructed to the memory of the Six Million in metropolises throughout the world.  Relying on deep pockets these buildings rise on significant gifts and bequests.  Massive JCCs have been built in virtually every city through the nation costing many millions of dollars.   At the same time, most religious institutions continue to exist on a shoe-string budget.  They barely balance their meager balance sheets.  And yet synagogues are the most meaningful contributors to Jewish survival! 

The fact that there are philanthropists at all that still remember they are Jewish is because of the shuls they were brought up in.  They never forgot the lessons of cheder (religious school).  Their teachers were insistent that tzedaka is humanity’s redemption.   Ingrained in their memory are sitting at shul and crying to God.  They will never forget the serious learning the long impassioned discussions about tzedaka and justice.  Wrapped in a tallit, benching licht (candle lighting), full emotional outpouring of the soul are all memories which inform the present.

It is usual too see sprawling hospitals in large metropolitan areas named for Jewish contributors.  The same is true of our universities.  A few years back a very rich and giving philanthropist died.  He donated millions to museums, institutions of learning.  One of his many legacies is the Annenberg Foundation which gives away grants and affords opportunities for many people throughout our country.    Training programs, educational media, communications and so much more were left by Walter Annenberg.  The name will be familiar if you watch PBS.  Little was given to Jewish causes.  Nothing at all that I am aware of was given to synagogues.  Why?

The same question can be leveled at many Jewish do-gooders.  Why do they ignore the fountain which feeds all the tributaries  If it were to dry up, rest assured the balance of the Jewish landscape would wither in its wake.  The Day Schools are in a similar quandary.  While they nurture the youngest shoots of the flower they receive scant attention from big donors.  Millions are given to create a chair at a university which does nothing to foster Jewish identity while rabbis and principals go about with their hands out.

Another oddity: all the afore mentioned buildings and programs will eventually fall away.  As proven through the epochs the only remaining feature of Jewish life are shuls and their educational appendages.  Need proof?  Think of the last time you traveled.  What noteworthy Jewish sites remain for more than a century?  Almost without exception they are synagogues.  What happened to the rest of their communal activities and structures?  We do not know.  They did not survive.

So why do the moneyed forget the place where the future is to be written?  I do not know.  But if anyone has an answer I would love to hear it. 

A Favor

Few are the tales that escaped the flames of the camps.  That is because the remnants of once-vast Jewish community were so few.  It is also because the survivors that emerged tried desperately to forget.  Those that attempted to relegate it to he distant past were haunted by unrelenting demons of the night.  Remembering was too difficult; forgetting too painful.

            One of the handful of stories that came to us was of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman, who became rebbe of the Warsaw ghetto.  Many are the legends that surround the man...but they are the stuff of myth.  The Rebbe took children under his gentle arms and taught them while the unspeakable erupted all about them.  Daily he took the little ones and taught them Holy Torah while outside the walls the Torah was desecrated; menschlichkeit where there was inhumanity;  holiness in the depths of depravity.  An angelic grace hovered over the study hall, or so they said.

            After years of sifting through the ashes, one lone deformed survivor was found.  Reluctant to confront the ghosts of the past, he finally rested his old, frail body and began to tell a fragment of a Shabbes tale with the Rebbe: 

“We danced, hundreds and maybe thousands of children, and the Master was singing a song to greet the holy angel, and at the mean he would teach between every course. ‘Kinderlach, der grosser zach in de velt iz tuen emetzen a favor.  The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor’.”

            The Rebbe --along with all his holy students -- were murdered at Treblinka.  Five years in Auschwitz this lone, poor man saw what no human being should see, what no creation of G-d should endure.  And, still, throughout all the torments, despite all the depravity, when he wanted nothing else than to just die, the words of the Rebbe came back to him- precisely when he wanted give up, “The greatest thing in the world in simply to do someone a favor.” 

            From his perch resting his battered, crippled body, his eyes lifted to heaven with a radiance and he said, “Do you know how many favors you can do in Auschwitz?

            Perhaps we should all become disciples of Rabbi Kalonimus Kalman.  Maybe on the edge of this year we could bring the heaven of the Rebbe into our own lives.  - from the tales of Shlomo Carlebach