Sh’ma Blog: “Look Me in the Eye: A Meditation on Charitable Giving”

A Video by Yoni Oppenheim

Sh’ma Blog: “The Communal Tzadik is the Rapper, the Kooky Visionary is the DJ.” Matt Bar On Daniels S. Nevins “Rebranding Tzedakah: From Charity to Sacred Spending.”.”

BY: MC MATT BAR
There were many things that resonated for me in Nevins’ Sh’ma article “Rebranding Tzedakah: From Charity to Sacred Spending.” In what was an otherwise beautifully orchestrated piece, I couldn’t’ help but cringe at a solitary note of discord in a distinction he makes between two types of philanthropists in the Jewish world. [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Tzedakah: Kindness by Choice

BY: EMILY GOLDBERG
Life is unpredictable. Some days, we experience the blessings that life has to offer, varying from successes, new opportunities, and happiness.  For most days, we can consider ourselves quite lucky when reflecting on the positive gifts that we receive, such as good health, fortune, shelter, and family. Despite the fluctuating economy, many of [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Tzedakah – How much is too much?

BY: STEVEN REIN
“If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman” (Deut. 15:7) This section of the Torah is most concerned with [...]

Sh’ma Blog: The vest of the “ Ba’alei Tzedakah” (Giver of Charity)

BY: ANDI ARNOVITZ
Although I am a printmaker who works primarily on paper, with a printing press, I felt it necessary to create something that hypothetically could indeed hold and contain money. After going back to the most basic of Jewish sources, the Torah, I focused on a specific quote from Deuteronomy 15:7-8:
“ If there [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Peah and a Modern Jewish Ethic for Giving

BY: ALEX BRAVER

One should not make the Peah less than one-sixtieth [of the field], and even though we said that there is no definite amount for Peah: it is all based upon the size of the field, the number of poor, and the abundance of the crop.

Sh’ma Blog: The Power of the Global Pushke

BY: JUAN MEJIA

Rabbi Yehuda Hannasi said in Pirke Avot:  “Be careful in performing a light mitzvah as a weighty one, for you know not the reward of each mitzvah.” In the area of philanthropy we could render his thought thusly: “Be mindful of small gifts as well as of big gifts, [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Seeing the Impact of Donations

BY: ZOE JICK
My family used to keep a JNF tzedakah box on our kitchen counter. You know the one I’m talking about, that little blue box speckled with images of greenery and Israeli flags. In my home, the JNF tzdeakah box served as a constant reminder of the Jewish rebuilding of our ancestral homeland. The [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Help Me Make a Tzedakah Plan!

BY: RACHEL PETROFF KESSLER
When I was little, giving Tzedakah was fairly straight forward. A portion of your allowance? Into the tzedakah box. Find a penny on the street? Into the tzedakah box it goes. Then once or twice a year, we’d dump all the money out onto the dining room table and count it up, [...]

Sh’ma Blog: For every idea, a non-profit?

BY: CARYN AVIV

As a sociologist, I’ve always been interested in what kind of frames and metaphors people use to talk about and galvanize collective social action.   Innovation is a buzzword in the Jewish world, much the way the concept of ‘continuity’ exploded onto the Jewish communal agenda in the early 1990s.
In [...]