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Meeting the layers of need

By Elana Kahn-Oren
of The Chronicle staff

December 22nd, 2009

One evening last month, I sat with 50 or so other parents in Milwaukee Jewish Day School’s beit midrash and listened to our seventh-grade children talk about philanthropy and tzedakah. They posed a series of questions for us to answer and consider:

What is the difference between tzedakah and charity? What is malnutrition? What is microfinance?

My daughter’s grade is participating in an extraordinary project started by last year’s seventh graders that helps them learn to create real change in the world (see article in the April 1, 2009 issue of The Chronicle).

Under the direction of social studies teacher Brian King and through their non-profit organization, Voice of the Children, they learn about the lives of people in Africa and Asia, develop strategies to raise awareness, fundraise and choose how to disburse those funds.

I was moved to see our privileged children demonstrate their budding awareness of their relative wealth and their power as philanthropists. With Jewish identities seamlessly integrated with secular studies, they are learning to see the world and approach its repair as Jews.

Unfortunately, we don’t need to look as far as Asia to find suffering that demands our attention. This month’s Chronicle includes a story about struggle in our own Jewish community.

Jewish Family Services reports almost a 300 percent increase over last year in disbursement of emergency funds. Through its three different financial assistance sources (the largest of which is the Community Emergency Economic Assistance Fund, started this year in cooperation with the Milwaukee Jewish Federation) the agency granted $38,089 between July and September 2009, compared to $52,223 for the entire previous fiscal year.

What’s remarkable, said JFS intake coordinator Beth Shapiro, is the dramatic increase in recipients from zip codes in the North Shore suburbs.

“Some of these are people who would have been able to make donations in past years, and now they’re on the other end of it,” she said.

These days, economic need transcends old stereotypes and expectations. Victims of the financial crisis may be the family next door.

One of the questions asked during the seventh grade presentation was, “What is the difference between a want and a need?” Though it seems like an elementary question, applying it to our buying choices has the power to transform how we view our world.

Since that evening, I have been posing the question every time I reach for my wallet and my answers often find myself engaged in an internal analysis of my values.

Are snow pants a want or a need? A highly-valued want. Fine European gruyere? A want, definitely. What about that new furnace we had to buy after ours suddenly broke last month? A need.

Those kinds of needs may be obvious but there are other layers of need that we, as Jews, must acknowledge. Aside from the things we need to survive — food, shelter, clothing and medical care — there are things that we need to survive as Jews.

When we spend money on synagogue membership, day school tuition, Jewish camp and trips to Israel, we are funding essential pieces of our long-term Jewish survival.

If we don’t provide Jewish educations for our children, how will they answer the question, “Why be Jewish?” Will their children be Jewish? If we don’t gather with other Jews for prayer and community, how will we remember and appreciate the sacrifices of our ancestors, be enriched by our traditions and collectively evolve as Jews in the 21st century? And if we don’t support our synagogues, how will we find a minyan when we need one?

The story of our community in this recession includes the range of personal crises — from people who have to choose between paying rent or buying medication, to people unable to continue living fully as Jews. That story, our spectrum of needs, is our collective responsibility.

And it’s the imperative that drives my daughter’s seventh-grade project. Tzedakah, they explained, differs from charity because it is an obligation. We are commanded to help, to give, to stand up for others in need, to heal the world. We give not because it makes us feel good, but because we must.

As we begin a new secular year, let us learn from their lessons and do our best as their role models. If we need, we must ask. If we can, we must give.