In today’s world, the opportunity to engage in the work of social change is, literally, at our fingertips. But, does this newfound accessibility make us better donors? Adene Sacks and Dawne Bear Novicoff talk about our role as donors in an age of interconnectedness and independence: These days, it happens all the time. A 13-year old girl, preparing for her bat-mitzvah, sits down with her parents to talk about the mitzvah of giving tzedakah (charity or justice) for the occasion. The family turns to the internet and identifies a worthy project where they will ask friends and relatives to donate. With a few keyboard strokes, this family is able to express support for a project of their choice and provide funding for an individual who may live 10,000 miles away. In today’s world, the … Continue Reading
Everyone is a Philanthropist
[eJP note: AJWS recently launched Where Do You Give? - a conversation about where, why and to whom American Jews donate money. This is cross-posted from their blog.] by Erika Davis How do you make giving meaningful? Tzedakah, the Jewish commitment to righteous giving, is something that most people are familiar with. Tzedakah boxes are things of childhood memory for many Jews, except me. I tithed. Growing up with a Baptist mother, a Methodist father and educated in Catholic schools, the idea of giving charity was not lost on me. I can remember my mother reaching into her pocket book every Sunday morning to fish out crisp dollar bills for my sister and I to put in the collection plate that was passed around. I don’t remember what it felt like to put that money in the shiny gold plate, because … Continue Reading
Artists to Reimagine Tzedakah Box for 21st Century
American Jewish World Service (AJWS) has launched a national design competition focused on philanthropy and social change. Where Do You Give? challenges artists to create a 21st century icon inspired by the values and imagery of the traditional Jewish tzedakah, or charity, box. The organization is encouraging designers to consider the tzedakah box in the context of an increasingly interconnected, global and technologically accelerated world. “Where Do You Give? aims to spark vibrant conversations about where, why and to whom American Jews donate money,” said AJWS vice president for programs, Aaron Dorfman. “As an international human rights organization, AJWS is charting new territory by launching a design competition. We’re looking forward to working closely with artists, design … Continue Reading
The Guide for the Perplexed Donor: Tzedakah as Jewish Identity
by Noam Zion “We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.” - Anonymous Bombarded by requests for help from worthy causes, how does a philanthropist choose? The answer resides not only in the nature of the cause and the effectiveness of the organization, but also in answering certain questions: Who are you as a giver? What is your reason for giving? And, what is your vision? Beyond personal biography and a rigorous process of due diligence, a donor may be enriched by understanding the collective cultural and religious roots of giving in the Western world. But how do we set priorities among all the truly valuable projects? Effective, professional giving is essential, but it must be translated into a value language in order to explain it - especially, to explain one’s … Continue Reading
Volunteering + Values: Connecting the Dots
by Jon Rosenberg and Lisa Eisen Opportunities to shift fundamentally the Jewish communal landscape and deepen our collective impact on the world do not arise every day. But as it happens, one has been making headlines within and beyond our community over the past few weeks. With the release of Volunteering + Values: A Repair the World Report on Jewish Young Adults, we received a roadmap for helping young Jews bring Jewish identity and values into the forefront of their efforts to serve the common good. Why is this important? Because today we are blessed with a generation of young Jews who believe deeply that they can - and should - have a positive impact on the world. They are volunteering in droves and are full of passion, especially about eradicating poverty and illiteracy and preserving … Continue Reading
Hold Jewish Leaders Accountable for Gender Equity
[eJP note] This post, originally published February 25, 2010, is part of the series 28 Days, 28 Ideas - a joint project of seven media partners, including eJewish Philanthropy, that ran during February 2010. Contributed by The Sisterhood Blog @ The Forward, it is republished today in recognition of International Women's Day. by Joanna Samuels The Jewish community rightly holds its leaders responsible for managing complex organizational tasks. Yet when it comes to creating workplaces that routinely hire, advance and retain women in positions of authority and visibility, many leaders throw up their hands. So here’s a thought: Let’s all of us, leaders and constituents, stop acting like the advancement of women in Jewish communal life is impossibly complicated. If communal leaders follow these … Continue Reading
Andrew Silow-Carroll on Tikun Olam and Peoplehood
by Andrew Silow-Carroll There are few things more satisfying than finding out that something you’ve been saying for years is actually true. In a number of columns, I’ve written about the rise of tikun olam as a Jewish way of saying “social justice.” Although the concept of “repairing the world” has been in the Jewish vocabulary for centuries - especially among kabalists - I’ve confidently asserted that hardly anyone talked about it before the early 1980s. Google’s nifty “Ngrams” tool confirms this. Plug in any word and Google will chart how often it appears among the millions of books in Google’s on-line database. I entered “tikkun” (the most common spelling). Google generated a hockey-stick shaped graph that shows few if any examples of the term before 1980, then … Continue Reading
Identity and Structure: The Delicate Balance in the Jewish Agenda
by Robert Hyfler, PhD. The identity advocate says: “Our goal is to promote 21st century options for Jewish living”. The structuralist replies: “Our challenge is to create a Jewish community worth living in”. Of course the two statements are not mutually exclusive and are indeed mutually reinforcing. A compelling vision of the joys of Jewish life must go hand in glove with a commitment to building those agencies and institutions that embody Jewish values and ensure an organizational framework for the future. Yet our communal and philanthropic world is seldom good at nuance. From generation to generation, decade to decade, one strategy over the other has often held sway. For the past two decades the identity advocates have been ascendant. The questions they ask and the … Continue Reading
AJWS Hosts Global Justice Conference For Rabbis and Rabbinical Students
More than 40 rabbis and rabbinical students, from across the denominational spectrum, will participate in a global justice leadership retreat in Reisterstown, Maryland from February 20 to 23. In its second year, the conference, called the Rabbinical Students Delegation Alumni Institute (RSD Alumni Institute), will focus on leveraging participants’ power to elevate global justice as a core expression of Jewish tradition, both locally and in the larger North American Jewish community. All RSD Alumni Institute participants have traveled with American Jewish World Service (AJWS), which sends two multi-denominational groups of rabbinical students and graduate students pursuing careers in Jewish communal leadership and one group of early-career rabbis to the developing world each year. During these … Continue Reading
Repair and Reflection: Service Learning and Our World
by Michelle Lackie The Jewish community has long understood that peer-group trips are an effective way to strengthen the Jewish identity of teens and young adults. The advent of Taglit-Birthright Israel in 1999 ushered in a revolutionary new era of intensive immersive programs in which Jewish organizations supported large-scale, short-term trips where micro-communities were created to undergo transformative Jewish experiences together. Birthright dwarfed previous efforts and changed the game. When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Hillel was well-positioned to harness its experience and infrastructure in providing Birthright trips to send large numbers of Jewish students on service-learning programs to the Gulf Coast. Until that time, local Hillels had operated such programs at a much smaller … Continue Reading
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