Like a lot of Jewish kids, I spent much of age 12 getting ready for my bar mitzvah. I studied with a couple of our local rabbis in Ann Arbor, where I grew up. I learned how to lead different parts of the Shabbat service, how to read from the Torah, and to prepare a speech about my Torah portion (it was Bamidbar, which is read in late spring–right around the time this episode is going to air).
I received some lovely gifts for my bar mitzvah. One was a University of Michigan flag signed by the head coaches of the football and men’s basketball teams (which had both won championships that year). Another was—wait for it, because it’s so on-brand for your nerdy Jewish host—my first-ever subscription to the Sunday New York Times.
But I didn’t actually receive a ton of presents. Why? Because of a guy named Danny Siegel.
Danny has spent his career writing about tzedakah, encouraging Jews—not only the rich, but everyday regular folks—to share what they have with others. The year of my bar mitzvah, he came to Ann Arbor to speak to our Hebrew School class about how and why we should think about making tzedakah a part of our bar and bat mitzvahs.
I drank up Danny’s message, and in the invitations to the bar mitzvah that we sent out, I included a card telling people to take the money they would have spent on a gift for me and instead donate it to a charitable cause.
People gave to all kinds of things: planting trees in Israel (classic); a women’s health clinic; animal shelters; programs to help poor Jews; the Sierra Club. (I got on a lot of mailing lists that year.) It was pretty amazing. And, as I’m sure was Danny’s intention, it helped me develop a hopefully healthier orientation to things and possessions. To this day, I’m really not very interested in owning things, but very interested in sharing what I have.
This is our fifth episode in a ten-episode miniseries on interpersonal mitzvot. Last week, I shared a story about meeting a family outside a drug store at night, and we reflected together on that kind of immediate, person-in-front-of-you-asking-for-money giving. Today, as promised, I want to focus on this other kind of tzedakah—the kind where there isn’t a literal person right there in front of you. Because this is an equally important kind of giving—and probably a harder one to do.
Why do I say that? When someone is in need right in front of us, our heartstrings are moved. It actually takes some work to suppress our natural feelings of compassion. But when we’re sitting at our kitchen table and no one is right there asking for help, it takes effort to bring those people into our awareness. In fact, tzedakah in such cases isn’t only about giving to someone in need. It’s an opportunity to develop and maintain our own orientation to the money and possessions we have.
Perhaps the most fundamental Jewish spiritual teaching on this subject comes from the ancient rabbi, Shimon ben Zoma, who taught: “Who is wealthy? Someone who is happy with what they have.” We know this from those studies that come out every year that tell us that it’s not rich people who are generally the happiest in life. It’s often people who don’t have as much materially, but who also aren’t always chasing material success. They’re happy with what they have, and that makes them more able to focus on the priceless things in life: family, community, relationships, meaning.
Those same people, it turns out, are also often the most charitable. Someone who is happy with what they have doesn’t have a problem sharing with others. Why? Because the word “have” is actually in quotation marks. Ben Zoma, like his ancient rabbinic colleagues and, frankly, like all great spiritual teachers, reminds us of what the Torah says: We are “strangers and sojourners” with the Creator of the Universe. None of it actually belongs to us. We don’t “have” anything—we’re just borrowing it for a little while.
In the consumerist-materialist-capitalist culture we live in, this is frankly heretical. Crazy. Meshuggeneh. But it’s also the essence of not only an approach to tzedakah, but to life in general. It’s truth—and, I would suggest, we all kind of know it on a deep level.
Here’s a short meditation exercise that I think can help us remember this lesson.
Begin with a few good deep breaths. Settle your body. Settle your mind.
With each exhale, see if you can let go a little bit more.
Try to notice ways you may be holding on, clinging a little a bit. See if you can soften that.
As you reach the bottom of your exhalation, try to wait a beat or two before you take a breath in. See if you can notice the natural desire to inhale—and let that happen of its own accord, almost like you’re giving in to it. Not controlling it, but riding the wave of the breath.
See if you can do the same thing at the top of the inhale. Hold it for a beat or two, then give into your body’s natural need to exhale, and ride the wave of the breath again.
Do that again a few times. Holding the bottom of the exhale, and the top of the inhale for just a beat or two.
What you might notice in this practice is that the body naturally wants to share—to take in oxygen from the plant world, to return CO2 back to it. The Universe, God, Creation, whatever you want to call it, has made us this way: interconnected. Related. Mutually dependent. And it’s a wonderful thing.
When we breathe this way, we can touch into that fundamental interconnection, that sense that, on a deep level, there isn’t a me or mine, but there’s an us and ours. We don’t actually “have” anything—we’re just borrowing it for a while. And we can maybe feel the deep satisfaction of sharing what we have with all who need it.
Blessings for the journey. Know that I’m on it with you.