Serious Jews of both genders consider it their responsibility to be charitable. Our tradition has much to say about the philosophy of tzedaka, from the personal to the institutional and from the demonstration of compassion to the expression of patronage. Given the ubiquity of tzedaka requests in our lives, it seems important for us to consider how women fit into the philanthropic picture and whether we bring something unique or particular to the performance of this important Jewish obligation.
Whether working inside or outside the home, women now take a greater role than in the past in decisions about where and how the family gives charity. While traditionally expected to support the mikvah and run the sisterhood, women today have the ability to provide or direct larger contributions from their family tzedaka pot. This new reality presents what might seem to be a tempting opportunity for women to move their family’s giving away from supporting institutions that have denied women access and toward new and innovative projects. But while this move may satisfy a taste for reprisal, it would be short-sighted for both women and the community at large to support one type of giving at the expense of the other.
When considering tzedaka opportunities, an active member of a community is pulled in two directions–to maintain existing institutions and to make change. On the one hand, she understands how much blood, sweat, and tears have gone into creating and maintaining the old workhorse institutions that run the community. It is not very exciting to support these establishments, and they are often bogged down in the rusty machinery of habit and convention. Very often, they are run by an oldboys’ network, and one’s first impulse is to write them off.
On the other hand, there is something awe-inspiring about the way these institutions embody a previous generation’s hopes and creativity– often the generation that created you– and it has always seemed to me both disrespectful and somewhat impulsive to move on to new projects without being very sure that the old ones do not simply need a new infusion of ideas and support. As active participants in a community, we should give more than passing thought to how disheartening it is to build something, only to watch as the next wave of leadership discards it. Moreover, not only can progress occur much more naturally when it is part of an ongoing involvement but also much money can be saved by using the infrastructure that has been put into place by the people who came before you. This is not to suggest that one should sentimentally waste money on tired and no longer relevant ideas. New and innovative ways of thinking and doing are crucial. However, we cannot ignore our solemn responsibility to support the social institutions on which our community depends–the shul, the school, the mikvah, the eruv– and to make sure these institutions stay relevant to all of us and important to the way we live our lives.
Very often, real life gets in the way of our most thought-through and planful intentions. Israeli victims of terror need immediate help, the crisis in Darfur won’t wait until all of our communal institutions are solidly financed, and the man who won’t give his wife a get will be only too happy if I’m too busy raising money for my school to support people who will picket his place of business. Add to the mix, the many individuals who ring our collective telephones and come to our collective community doors with immediate needs and palpable misery. In these most intimate, even intrusive, of tzedaka encounters, how does one determine a response that is simultaneously true to one’s values, one’s long-range plans, one’s point of view, one’s ability, and one’s right to privacy? Here is an area where we need to use our judgment, on a case-by-case basis, to implement charity-giving that is resistant to both manipulation and cynicism, both of which threaten to poison the tzedaka-giving atmosphere of our Jewish eco-system. Those who give tzedaka and those who receive it need to understand and acknowledge that giving charity includes an element of choice and that sometimes the answer is a legitimate, if regretful or apologetic, “No.”
At its most exciting, giving tzedaka can involve being a more direct agent of change, especially when the need for change feels urgent. One of the factors that is very important to me in contemplating where I would like to give this kind of charity is the degree to which my giving might effect real change. When contemplating new endeavors, I am personally more likely to want to contribute to a small project with a limited but measurably achievable goal than to a large project with a global agenda and a big budget. Because, like many women outside the world of finance, I come to the causes I small” perspective comes out of my recognition that, when it comes to women’s issues, the only steps that can work, at least in the Orthodox community, are very small steps. When you’re changing a culture, you can only make people a little bit uncomfortable, a little at a time.
“…giving tzedaka can involve being a more direct agent of change…”
I have learned, moreover, that successful small projects often develop into successful big projects, which can result in your landing on the ground floor of something new and exciting.I remember, in particular, the first organization that I actually sought out to contribute to, because I felt that its idea was so brilliant. It was a very empowering feeling to be able to put money behind an excellent idea – in this case, Nishmat’s idea of a Yo’etzet Halacha – and to see that idea move forward into the world. There was something personally confirming about recognizing the zeitgeist and being connected directly to the process of change. The beauty of being able to give tzedaka in this way is that you yourself do not have to be a brilliant scholar, or a driven revolutionary, or a tireless crusader –you just have to be able to recognize one. Your talent lies in the ability to identify possibilities and in your particular power to help translate those possibilities into making Jewish life–yours and/or others–better.
We need to ask ourselves what kind of change we want to make. Change can involve making something better or making something different, in getting rid of something or adding something, or in providing something physical–like food or refuge–or providing something more abstract, such as freedom or justice. For us, as women in the Orthodox community, these questions are grave and important, for they touch on the most fundamental aspects of our Jewish experience. We are not in a position to legislate change, nor is Orthodox Judaism a system that is easily given to change. But we are in a position to drive change. For many of us, the religious life we treasure meshes less than perfectly with the kind of openness and freedom we take for granted in our secular lives, and while that clash is in some ways fruitful, it often gives us pause. As women, we wonder whether or how we might be able to leaven one reality with the other–to invest more spiritual meaning in the general culture and to push the envelope of our Jewish experience. But to do that, we have to articulate to ourselves what we require to feel more alive and fully present in our complex religious lives. Putting money behind that wondering–by investing in halakhic research and learning, for example–allows us to venture beyond where we are and to take some small steps toward integrating our absolute allegiance to the Torah with our modern sensibilities. Paying our way makes possible the translation of these ideas into reality, fueling our attempts to define ourselves more truly by ensuring that our religious lives encompass our lived reality.
In that sense, supporting efforts that deal directly with women’s challenges– in the areas of education, religious status, divorce, or abuse–is our responsibility. It is also our responsibility to make sure that the men of our community understand that supporting the advancement of women in all of these areas is crucial to our communal well-being. At this point in our history, women’s issues need to be a frontline agenda for all of us–women and men alike. We should all be supporting girls’ and women’s educational initiatives, insisting on day care in our schools, funding individual female scholars who will be our future talmidot chachamot, paying for innovative attempts to solve the agunah crisis, and lobbying for to’anot here and in Israel. At the same time, women should be pushing hard to join boards and to assume other positions of communal responsibility. We should be thinking hard and talking forcefully about important issues in the wider Jewish community, and we should be putting our carefully allocated money behind the things we believe in, while still “paying our dues” to established social institutions. We may not be in a position to make the changes alone, but finding our own voices and stepping up to our own responsibilities will resonate in the community to everyone’s benefit.