Generosity
Generosity
Speech by Rabbi Cohon at “Prayer for Peace” Multi-Faith Service 3 10 26 held at the LDS (Mormon) North Stake, Tucson, AZ
There is a famous story about a rabbi who has a wonderful idea for how to fix the problem of poverty in his village. He tells his wife, eagerly, ““All we need is to get all the wealthy people in town to give half their money to the poor, and we will be able to take care of the problem.”
His wife smiles indulgently and suggests he try to accomplish this.
Late that night the rabbi comes home, looking exhausted.
“So how did you do?” his wife asks him.
“I’m halfway there,” the rabbi says. “I have gotten all the poor people to agree to accept the money.”
Generosity is a funny thing. We all know we should be generous and give to those in need, and we all do some of that. But if we really were able to give enough to rectify the profound imbalances in our society, we would have a very different world.
The Hebrew word for generosity is tzedakah, which is also translated as charity. But that is not an accurate translation. Tzedakah has the root word of Tzedek, which means justice or righteousness. In our tradition, the concept of generosity is not simply related to kindness or graciousness or sympathy of even empathy. It is, at heart, the reestablishment of justice in a world that so often does not reflect that. It is a profound commandment, very much at the heart of Jewish ethics. Tzedek Tzedek tirdof, we are commanded in Deuteronomy: justice, justice you must pursue. Equity of opportunity, including financial opportunity, is a central aspect of justice. And without justice, of course, there cannot be peace. Which means that without the generosity that enables justice in our society and our world we will never be able to enjoy true peace.
In the Talmud, the great collection of law and lore, Judaism mandates tzedakah, generosity in charitable giving, to the level of 10% to 20% of your gross income. The concept of tithing that is invented in the Torah was supposed to be the baseline, not the ceiling. I wonder how many of us meet that standard today?
There is a well-known passage in the Mishna Avot, the ethics of the ancestors in the classic Jewish legal collection from the third century. It reads:
אַרְבַּע מִדּוֹת בָּאָדָם. הָאוֹמֵר שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלָּךְ, זוֹ מִדָּה בֵינוֹנִית. ]וְיֵשׁ אוֹמְרִים, זוֹ מִדַּת סְדוֹם.[ שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלְּךָ וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלִּי, עַם הָאָרֶץ. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלְּךָ וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלָּךְ, חָסִיד. שֶׁלִּי שֶׁלִּי וְשֶׁלְּךָ שֶׁלִּי, רָשָׁע:
There are four types of character in human beings: The first is the type of person who says: “what is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours”: this is an ordinary type of person… A second is the person who says: what is “mine is yours and what is yours is mine”: this is a foolish person (am haaretz); third is the one who says, what is “mine is yours and what is yours is yours;” this is a pious person. And finally, there is the person who says: What is “mine is mine, and what is yours is mine”; that is a wicked person.
This is a pretty simple passage to comprehend, of course, and we can easily agree that someone who gives her or his possessions away to help others is some kind of saint; that someone who takes other’s needed possessions or funds is wicked, even evil. We realize that most of us fall into the general category of “ordinary”: we protect our own stuff, but don’t give enough to others.
However, I’ve always been a little puzzled about that odd category of what is called in the Mishnah, “ignorant people”: those people who say, “what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine.” I can’t say I know anyone like that, although I do remember the occasional neighbor who borrowed a tool or something and didn’t return it. I’ve been that neighbor once or twice… But who thinks like that? Who simple wants to just exchange all their stuff with other people’s stuff?
Odd solutions came to mind: was this some sort of ancient rabbinic objection to socialism or communism, over 1500 years before those concepts were ever conceptualized? Were the rabbis warning us about the dangers of co-dependency nearly two millennia before Freud?
Or was there something else here?
What is “mine is yours and what is yours is mine”: what if that means something quite different?
What if we think about that phrase as indicating that we are in society together, and that what you have, and what you need, is connected to what I have and what I need. It is not a zero-sum game, as the rabbi in our first story believed. It is much more a matter of how interconnected we all are, how we cannot see others fail without it impacting our own peace of mind, our own sense of justice and trust in our society.
Maybe the great scholars of our past were simply mistaken. Sacrilege, I know, to say that, but the maybe the point of all this emphasis on generosity is to understand, acknowledge, and address the inequities in our society with our own generosity, because we are all connected. We are all created in the image of the same God. We are all responsible for each other.
4:3 הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אַל תְּהִי בָז לְכָל אָדָם, וְאַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ אָדָם שֶׁאֵין לוֹ שָׁעָה וְאֵין לְךָ דָבָר שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מָקוֹם:
Ben Azzai used to say: do not despise any man, and do not discriminate against anything, for there is no man that has not his hour, and there is no thing that has not its place.
And there is no act of generosity you should not do, in the best way and to the best of your abilities. Because only when we are truly generous to others will we see justice restored, and will we be able to enjoy true peace.