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Part II: Symposium 79 Philanthropy From the Pragmatic to the Sublime—And Back Again: A Jew’s Thoughts on Money Jonathan Lopatin THE FUNNY thing about money is that it is a problem for those who have enough as well as for those who don’t. It is a problem for those busy making it, for those who will never make it all, and for those who have finished with the give and take of the commercial jungle. The heartwrenching challenges faced by those in need (and by any reasonable standard, this comprises most people alive in the world today) are abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see the crushing effect of poverty all around us. But what about the issues raised for those of us who have more than we need to meet our own material needs and who feel obligated to share some of our wealth with others? In varying degrees, most American Jews today—from business people and professionals who lead lives of relative comfort to the mega-millionaires so visible in our philanthropic institutions—fall into this category. Money is both a source of wealth and a medium of exchange. As such, where money comes from and how we choose to use it determines one person’s good fortune and another’s bad luck. Even if the fundamental problem of bad things happening to good people (in theological terms, the problem of theodicy) often presents itself as a question of physical health rather than of wealth or poverty, money makes a great difference even in matters of life and death—as Americans without adequate health insurance all too often bear witness. What more fertile ground, then, is there in which to consider the rightness of our conduct toward our neighbors than in the question of how to use money to help others? How much is too much? What special responsibilities does prosperity bring? Whom should we use our resources to help, and how should we help them? Can the Jewish tradition, formed over many thousands of years, teach me anything practical about this in today’s circumstances, which differ vastly from the circumstances of the ancient world in which these values were originally formed? Social Responsibility in Jewish Tradition I recently heard Dr. Judith Hauptman, one of America’s most prominent Talmud scholars, teach a group of rabbinical students that “Social justice Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices: MONEY 80 is the driving force of halakhah (Jewish law).” This statement comes as a shock to liberal Jews who often think that the force of halakhah has more to do with rite than with right. But her claim that just conduct and the ties that bind members of a community to one another are as central to Judaism as theology and ritual should come as no surprise. Indeed, the complex interplay of our relations with our neighbors and of our duties to God is the subtext of many of even the most arcane questions of Jewish law. That is why practical people, who don’t necessarily have a taste for the arcane, seek guidance in the traditional study of Jewish texts. If the prophet Micah (6:8) taught us to “do justice and to love goodness and to walk humbly with your God,” the job of the Rabbis was to apply that dictum to the concrete circumstances of our lives; the Mishnah, the Talmud , and the rest of rabbinic literature are a record of their attempts to do so. I understand from this tradition that tzedakah is not voluntary but is a responsibility incumbent on each of us. Even those who themselves receive tzedakah remain responsible to give back to the community. In this vein I find intensely practical guidance in Jewish tradition. Our tradition embraces the notion that people are obligated to use their resources to improve the lot of those who suffer misfortune, but it seems to accept the view that it is not our nature to be entirely selfless. True, other more radical practices were known in the ancient Jewish world. The Essenes and the Qumram community of the Second Temple period, for example, seem to have lived in primitive “socialist” communities, characterized by asceticism and the absence of private property. But these radical egalitarian social arrangements did not become the norm for Jews of later periods. Instead, although Jews have imagined an end of days in which society will function very differently from how it does now, we do not seem to be obligated...

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