In 1943, a psychologist at Brooklyn College published a paper that would become one of the most cited frameworks in human development. Abraham Maslow argued that needs form a hierarchy: people cannot pursue belonging until they have safety, cannot pursue esteem until they belong, and cannot pursue their fullest potential until every foundation beneath them is stable.

In 1180, a Jewish philosopher in Cairo published a legal code that would shape Jewish ethics for centuries. Moses Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, described eight levels of tzedakah: a ladder ascending from grudging charity to the highest form: investing in someone’s capacity never to need charity again. His framework was not about the amount of the gift. It was about the recipient’s dignity and the giver’s orientation.

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These two frameworks are more than intellectual curiosities when placed side by side. They are, I would argue, a mandate, one addressed not to any single institution but to every Jewish communal organization that aspires to serve the full arc of human life: synagogues, JCCs, federations, day schools, camps, social service agencies and foundations alike.

The question they pose, read together, is both simple and demanding: Does this institution meet people where they are and walk with them toward where they could be?

The pyramid and the ladder

Maslow’s hierarchy is a theory of individual development. Its base is essential physical needs, followed by safety and security. Next is belonging, the sense that one is part of something larger than oneself. Then come esteem, recognition and, finally, self-actualization — the pursuit of one’s fullest potential.

The insight that made Maslow’s model so enduring is also its most important lesson for Jewish communal leaders: you cannot skip a rung. You cannot help someone self-actualize if they do not feel they belong. You cannot build a sense of belonging in someone who does not feel safe. Institutions that operate only at the top — funding excellence, curating leadership, celebrating achievement — while neglecting the foundation are building on sand.

Maimonides inverted the gaze. Where Maslow asked what a person needs to receive, Maimonides asked what a giver owes the dignity of the one they serve. It is the lowest rung: giving grudgingly. The rungs ascend through giving cheerfully, giving anonymously and giving before being asked until reaching the pinnacle: strengthening someone so thoroughly that they no longer need assistance at all. This is not relief; it is transformation.

The word tzedakah itself encodes this ambition. Its root, tzedek, means justice, not generosity. Maimonides was describing a moral obligation to restore a person’s full dignity as a fellow citizen. The gift is not the point; the outcome is the point.

Where they converge

Read together, Maslow and Maimonides illuminate a single truth: the highest human aspiration and the highest philanthropic aspiration are the same. Self-actualization is the state in which a person has everything needed to pursue their deepest purpose; and the highest tzedakah is giving in a way that produces exactly that state in another person.

The implication for Jewish communal strategy is significant. An institution that operates only at Maslow’s lower tiers — meeting basic needs, providing safety nets — is doing essential work, but it is relieving suffering without building capacity. And an institution that aims only at self-actualization — funding leadership pipelines, arts excellence and elite education without attending to belonging and safety — may be serving only those who already have enough.

The institution that achieves both, that meets people at the base of the pyramid and walks with them toward its peak, is the one Maimonides would recognize as practicing justice, not merely charity.

The confluence as an institutional imperative

What does it mean, in practice, for a Jewish communal institution to operate at this confluence?

It means a synagogue cannot be content serving only those who arrive already rooted. It must ask who lacks the safety or belonging to walk through the door in the first place. A day school that invests in academic excellence while leaving struggling families outside its scholarship processes is ascending the pyramid while ignoring its base. A legacy organization that funds innovation and leadership initiatives while defunding social service agencies is choosing the apex over the foundation.

The confluence demands something harder than excellence in any single dimension. It asks institutions to hold the full hierarchy simultaneously; to be present at the bottom of the pyramid with the same strategic seriousness brought to the top. For Maslow, this is the condition of human flourishing. For Maimonides, this is the definition of justice.

None of this is easy. It requires institutions to resist the pull toward the most visible, most fundable, most celebrated work, and to invest in the slower, foundational work of building human capacity across generations. It requires philanthropists to resist the pull toward targeted, measurable interventions and to invest in generalist institutions that do full-spectrum work.

A standard, not a nostalgia

These frameworks give Jewish communal leaders a language for a reckoning that has been building for years. Too many of our institutions operate at one end of the hierarchy or the other; either meeting urgent needs without building toward flourishing or celebrating flourishing. At the same time, the foundations beneath it go untended.

The honest question these frameworks invite is not what programs are we running, but where on the pyramid are we meeting our community and where on the ladder of tzedakah are our practices of giving and serving?

An institution that can answer those questions honestly is one capable of genuine transformation, not merely of programs, but of people. To operate at the confluence of Maslow and Maimonides is to understand that human flourishing is sequential and that justice requires attending to the full sequence: in our communities, in our institutions and in ourselves.

Todd Polikoff is the CEO of the Aaron Family JCC of Dallas.