Behind the Headlines: New Forms of Jewish Charity Evolving Based on Religious and Social Values

Laura Solomon, her husband and two other couples are planning a tzedakah collective, through which they will jointly decide how to distribute their charitable dollars.

The three young couples are good friends who met through their Philadelphia synagogue and have several reasons for wanting to try to pool their efforts.

“The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and everyone brings to the table new possibilities,” said Solomon.

“By aggregating, we have the ability to make more of an impact to improve the community. We’re sometimes frustrated by the nickel-and-dime giving” that we can afford to do on our own, she said.

Theirs will be one of a few dozen formal and informal tzedakah collectives around the country, some of which began in the 1970s, born of a desire for intensive personal involvement in deciding where each charitable dollar goes.

Tzedakah collectives make up one facet of a quietly growing movement of Jews who, by making socially and spiritually conscious decisions about how they contribute and invest and spend their money, are building a “Torah of money” for contemporary life.

The term has been coined by Lawrence Bush and Jeffrey Dekro in their new book “Jews, Money & Social Responsibility: Developing a ‘Torah of Money’ for Contemporary Life.”

According to Bush and Dekro, developing a “Torah of Money” means making decisions based on social responsibility spurred by Jewish spirituality.

It is about basing financial decisions on an ethos in which “the dictates of the bottom line and the teachings of the ‘Most High’ are harmonized,” write the authors.

And it is an approach to money — particularly in the area of tzedakah — which seems to be catching on.

The charitable organizations within the Jewish community that focus on this ethos are relatively small groups.

NEW GROUPS HAVE GROWN DESPITE ECONOMY

But over the past several years, as the recession has battered the ability of even philanthropic heavyweights to keep up donations, these ethics-based agencies have grown.

For example, Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, has more than doubled its income and grantmaking in the past four years. This past year, it disbursed $1.65 million to anti-hunger programs, up from $700,000 in 1989.

Mazon disburses money to anti-hunger programs within the Jewish community, to nonsectarian agencies domestically and to crisis areas like Sarajevo.

In 1985, the year it began making grants, the Jewish Fund for Justice disbursed $30,000. In 1992 it donated $421,525 to housing and community revitalization projects.

The Shefa Fund gave out about $37,000 during its first year, 1988-89, and this year will facilitate the disbursement of eight times that amount — $225,000 — in contributions to projects related to social and economic justice, the impact of gender and the arts. The fund was founded by Dekro, co-author of the “Torah of Money” book.

The New Israel Fund, which disburses money to a wide range of projects in Israel dedicated to issues including civil rights, women’s rights and Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, has more than doubled the amount it raises since 1988.

NIF in 1988 raised $3.3 million. In 1992, the last year for which figures are available, the organization raised $8.4 million.

Something about the way these groups do business is clearly appealing to American Jews.

Foremost among the attractions is the sense of personal stewardship that contributors to these funds feel over their donations.

People want a sense “of direct participation in the process,” said Dekro.

“People giving small sums are not likely to feel part of the process because federations are run by wealthy people. That means that people with smaller amounts to donate do not feel directly part of the process,” he said.

ATTRACTIVE TO THOSE FEELING EXCLUDED

These newer groups “all represent new forms of giving, and are attractive vehicles for people who have been marginally identified” because they feel that Jewish community institutions have excluded them, he added.

Accountability is greatly valued by these groups’ donors.

We get “a high level of scrutiny” from contributors, said Norman Rosenberg, executive director of the New Israel Fund. “They question what’s in the annual report, ask for progress reports. The demand grows as time goes by.”

Other influences — like the social responsibility movement and a desire to connect to and express Jewish values through every act — are also at work.

“Many of us were raised in an age of pursuit of social justice and having money was something we condemned when we were younger,” said Dekro.

“Now we know we need money for our families and we are finding that more money is available to us. We are trying to combine positive social values and the resources available to us for our needs and the larger needs of society as a whole,” he said.

But social action is only a “secondary” motivator, said Irving Cramer, executive director of Mazon. “The principle glue is a sense of religion, a sense of spirituality, of tradition.”

All of these facets of the “Torah of Money” are part of an effort to engage Jews consciously in the Jewish process of giving charity, and using that to strengthen their bond to the Jewish community — in short, utilizing tzedakah as a vehicle for Jewish continuity.

“People feel excited when they discover these Jewish vehicles for them to participate as Jews” in tzedakah, “when they had been raised to believe there was only one way to give, and that was to their federation,” said Dekro.

According to Marlene Provizer, executive director of the Jewish Fund for Justice, the opportunity afforded by some of these new philanthropies to marry spirituality, community and social responsibility “connects people to a sense of mission and purpose and feeling part of a community of shared values, which mitigates against a sense of isolation.

“People want to make a Jewish statement and see it as part of their Jewish identity.”