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Charitable Giving During the Pandemic Is the Jewish Thing to Do
BY YVETTE ALT MILLER | KVELLER
IT’S BEEN DECADES since I
ordered food at a McDonald’s.

I’ve kept kosher since I was 18
and, outside of Israel, at least,
Mickey D’s is decidedly treif.

Except the other day, I found
myself entering and ordering a
decidedly nonkosher cheese-
burger and fries.

To be clear, the food wasn’t for
me. After months of sheltering
in place in my suburban neigh-
borhood, I could no longer put
off a downtown appointment.

So I headed to Chicago’s central
business district. It felt like
something out of a dystopian
movie. There were no masses of
people hurrying along the wide
avenues; gone were the tourists
that stopped foot traffic as they
gaped at skyscrapers. Homeless
people seemed to be the largest
contingent I saw. On most
corners I passed, there were
several. “Can you help me out?” one
implored. Another asked for
money, saying he was cold and
wet and needed help. The amount
of need felt so overwhelming
that at first I rushed past them
all, ignoring their pleas.

Then, just before I boarded
a train back to the suburbs,
I asked myself why I hadn’t
helped. After all, I had cash on
me. Just then, I was approached
by a skinny man about my age
who asked for help.

“Sure, I can help you,” I said
as I reached for my wallet.

“I don’t want your money,”
he responded. “Can you buy
me a meal instead?”
“Of course,” I replied, trying
to mask my shock as it occurred
to me that as I almost rushed by,
there was a human standing here
hungry. I asked him where he
wanted to go, and he led me to a
nearby McDonald’s, one of the few
restaurants still open.

My new acquaintance
ordered a cheeseburger. Before
I paid, I hesitated.

“Why don’t you order
dinner, too, for later?” I asked.

He ordered Chicken McNuggets
and some sides. I swiped my
credit card: a total of $16 for
providing a day’s worth of food.

“God bless you — you’re
the only one who stopped,” he
told me.

In a time of such enormous
need, his words broke my
heart. After all, the pandemic
has decimated the economy.

A recent poll by the Pew
Research Center found that
about one-fourth of Americans
have had trouble paying their
bills in the past seven months.

Demand at food banks has
risen at an “extraordinary
rate,” according to The New
York Times, and up to 14% of
U.S. parents say their children
are not getting enough to eat.

“The number of families
having difficulty affording food
has exploded during COVID-
19,” the nonpartisan Center on
Budget Policy and Priorities
recently noted.

Each week, a food pantry
near my home offers drive-
through food assistance. The line
is long and filled with late-model
minivans. Just a few months
ago, many of these people would
never have imagined being in
this position. But jobs have been
eliminated, salaries cut and
workers furloughed.

In this unprecedented
moment, it’s wonderful that
many Jewish institutions are
redoubling their efforts to
help those in need. But are
we, as Jewish individuals and
families, doing the same?
Judaism mandates giving
charity: The Talmud goes into
great detail about the obliga-
tions we have to help others,
declaring “Charity is equiva-
lent to all the other mitzvot
combined.” The Jewish mitzvah
of maaser kesafim instructs
us to donate a portion of our
income to charity.

For many of us, performing
this mitzvah feels like an
impossible ideal. But perhaps it’s
finally time for us to have a
difficult conversation about our
attitudes to giving charity and
to the poor. Over the years, I’ve
heard some troubling comments
reflecting a profound reluctance
to help others. A friend once
told me she didn’t donate her
children’s castoffs to charity
because she didn’t believe in
helping people bear “children
they can’t afford.” A 10-year-old
student in one of my Sunday
school classes was taken aback
one day when we learned that
the Jewish sage Maimonides
taught that the highest form
of charity was giving a poor
person a job.

“But poor people don’t want
to work,” she said, no doubt
echoing what she’d heard at
home. “That’s why they’re poor!”
Unsurprisingly, the reality
is very different: A report in
October from the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics found that
the overwhelming majority of
unemployed workers expressed
hope of finding another job
soon. These attitudes have long
been a problem, but today
they’re a crisis that we can’t
ignore. We need to rediscover
the central Jewish tenet of
charity more than ever. When
people can no longer feed
themselves — when people
are begging on street corners,
wracked by hunger and asking
for succor — we have no choice
but to step up and help.

It’s time for us as a commu-
nity to step up to the plate
and, if we are in a position
to help, increase our chari-
table giving. Reach out to your
local synagogue, JCC or Jewish
Federation and ask what
they’re doing to help people
in your community. If you feel
they’re not doing enough, urge
them to do more, and consider
volunteering. Contribute to
emergency relief funds. Donate
to established charities. And
remember, too, that tzedakah
isn’t always made up of money
— if funds are tight, we can
also help by donating time and
expertise. A few weeks ago, if you
had asked me whether there
was more I could do to help, I
might have said no. I already
donate between 10% and 20%
of our income to charity. I
might have said I was maxed
out — I certainly would
never have thought I’d be
paying an impromptu visit to
McDonald’s. But there’s always
more we can do.

Judaism teaches that we are
each here to fulfill a specific
set of tasks that only we can
perform and for which we’re
given the precise, individual
tools we require. Let this be
our moment to shine. Let this
pandemic be our time to step
up and start helping our fellow
men and women in their hours
of need. l
Yad Vashem Needs Non-Bigoted Leadership
BY EVA FOGELMAN
12 NOVEMBER 26, 2020
THE OPPOSITION IS mounting
to the prospect of Effi Eitam, a
former far-right Israeli politi-
cian and general, becoming chair
of Israel’s national Holocaust
museum, Yad Vashem.

Among those urging Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
to change course are Israeli
Holocaust survivors, the
Anti-Defamation League and
Israeli opposition leader Yair
Lapid, along with plenty of
op-ed writers and pundits. It’s
bad enough that Eitam lacks
credentials in Holocaust educa-
tion and research. But even
more disturbing to his critics are
Eitam’s racist comments about
Israeli Arabs and Palestinians
— his call for expulsion of
Palestinians in the West Bank,
his description of Israeli Arabs as
a “fifth column” and insistence
that they should be barred from
serving in the country’s political
JEWISH EXPONENT
system — and the reprimand
he received after two soldiers
under his command said they
were following orders when they
beat two Palestinians, including
one who died from his wounds.

As a scholar with longtime
ties to Yad Vashem, count me
among those who are aghast
at the prospect of Eitam’s
appointment. The head of Yad Vashem
is responsible for budgetary
decisions, hiring directors of
departments, approving confer-
ences and publications. These
duties have implications for
shaping Holocaust research and
educations — what topics will
be emphasized, minimized or
ignored. As for public responsi-
bilities, the choices made by the
director in hosting or under-
mining international dignitaries
can damage relationships between
Israel and other countries.

JEWISHEXPONENT.COM