Charitable Giving

Making The Most Of Gleaning

Using volunteerism and philanthropic dollars to feed the growing ranks of Israel’s needy citizens.

Michele Chabin
Israel Correspondent
11/08/2011
Members of the Zahal Disabled Veterans organization spent a morning picking clementines for Leket Israel. Michele Chabin

Rehovot, Israel — When students at the Ulpana Orot Modi’in, a religious girls’ high school, learned that a classmate’s 18-year-old brother had fallen into a coma during the summer, they began to recite prayers and psalms for the young man’s recovery.

The 12th graders also decided to do good deeds on the injured man’s behalf, believing that he will be credited with the mitzvot and, hopefully, be healed.

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Essay: Rebranding Tzedakah

Moving the concept from charity to sacred spending.

Daniel S. Nevins
Special To The Jewish Week
11/08/2011

The third paragraph of birkat hamazon, the prayer after eating, presents an odd conflation of concerns. Opening with a petition for divine mercy toward Israel, its people, capital, temple and monarchy, the prayer veers into an anxious plea to escape material dependence on other mortals: “Do not make us dependent upon the gifts of people, nor on their loans, but only on Your full, bountiful, and capacious hand, that we not be ashamed or humiliated forever.” .

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Giving’s All In The Family

Inside one clan’s collective philanthropic effort.

Tamar Snyder
Special To The Jewish Week
11/08/2011
Becca Linden established her family’s philanthropic foundation after realizing, at a family reunion, “We’ve been blessed.”

In June, Becca Linden’s extended family gathered at the Chicago Inn in Illinois. Some 80 relatives attended the weekend soiree, flying in from places like California, Toronto, Arizona, Colorado, and New York. The family reunion featured a sumptuous Shabbat dinner, family videos on Saturday night, and games like “two truths and a lie” (wherein players attempt to separate truth from fiction about each other’s lives).

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For ‘Friends’ Groups, A New Normal

With the philanthropic ground under them shifting, American ‘Friends of’ nonprofits having to adjust to new realities.

Helen Chernikoff
Staff Writer
11/08/2011
Giving to American “Friends of” Israel groups, like the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, fell more between 2006 and 2009

Giving to American “Friends of” Israel organizations dropped sharply in recent years, but don’t blame the economic downturn, say the writers of a recent report that documented and analyzed the dip. The recession exacerbated the decrease in donations suffered by such groups as the Jerusalem Foundation, the American Friends of Open University and the Hadassah Medical Relief Organization but didn’t cause it, the report’s author, Avrum Lapin of EHL Consulting Group, told The Jewish Week..

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Hands-on Tzedakah Education

In the classroom and extra-curricular activities, local Jewish schools are teaching today’s students to be tomorrow’s givers.

Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
11/08/2011
Sara Ovadia, faculty adviser to Yeshivah of Flatbush’s Tzedakah Commission.

In the Yeshivah of Flatbush’s Sephardic Beit Midrash, faculty member Sara Ovadia is leading a few dozen students in a lunch-hour discussion about charity late one recent morning.

While the students, members of the school’s Tzedakah Commission, an educational-activist project, quietly pick at pizza and pasta in the crowded study hall, Ovadia outlines several upcoming programs for which she will need volunteers. A food pantry. A scavenger hunt. Pledges for teachers racing in a fund-raising marathon.

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Charitable Giving November 2011

From a yeshiva in Brooklyn to the orchards of Rehovot, learning the lessons of tzedakah. Plus, American ‘Friends Of’ groups adjusting to new giving realities, and one family’s giving circle.

11/08/2011
Charitable Giving November 2011
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A Leadership Training Program Struggles For Funding

In tough economic times, what’s seen as a particularly valuable
federation initiative needs a donor or two.

Doug Chandler
Special To The Jewish Week
10/12/2010
Melissa Donald.

Melissa Donald, a staff member at the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan since 2003, decided only a few years ago that her work in the Jewish world was not just a job, nor even a career, but “a calling.”

But that discovery wouldn’t have come at that point in her life if it weren’t for the Muehlstein Institute, she said, referring to the training program sponsored by UJA-Federation of New York for Jewish communal professionals at the start of their career.

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Charity Begins At The Beginning

Instilling the spirit of tzedakah at a young age,
and keeping it going.

Merri Rosenberg
Special To The Jewish Week
10/12/2010
Westchester teens work on a variety of projects in a Yonkers warehouse. courtesy of the AFYA Foundation.

F rom the time Sue Blumberg’s 12-year-old son Sam was 2, she’s made sure to include him in meaningful volunteer activities.

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For The Perplexed, A Guide To Giving

Experts weigh in on how to judge requests and
vet charities. The philanthropic road from
Maimonides to Guidestar.

Steve Lipman
Staff Writer
10/12/2010

A middle-aged professional in the Jewish communal world, Ari H. deals with a dilemma of Jewish life every time he returns from his Manhattan office to his home in Bergen County — how to honor the mitzvah of giving tzedakah with integrity while sorting out the constant requests for his money.

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A Foundation With A Cause

One family foundation has made the inclusion of special needs children in the Jewish community its signature issue.

Tamar Snyder
Staff Writer
10/12/2010
Jay Ruderman: “The Jewish community cannot ignore children with special needs.”

L ike most family foundations, the Ruderman Family Foundation at first operated as a checkbook, giving away money to a variety of different causes. Then, about six years ago, the foundation partnered with Gateways: Access to Jewish Education and Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies to launch the Initiative for Day School Excellence, a $45 million effort that enabled Jewish children with special needs to access any of the 14 Jewish day schools in the Boston area.

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