Lisa Exler is an educator at American Jewish World Service (AJWS) and the editor of Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum. Prior to joining AJWS, she taught at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan.
The American Jewish World Service brings Jewish philanthropy to the underprivileged throughout the world. Lisa Exler presents a curriculum developed to help teach their understanding of tzedakah priorities.
The challenge of responsible tzedakah
“Would you rather give tzedakah to an organization that sends doctors to clinics in villages in India to perform surgery and train health workers, or to a local clinic that provides medical care to low-income residents of your city?”
“Are all of the questions as hard as this one,” a student asked me as she debated whether to stand on the side of the room representing India or the side representing the local clinic.
I smiled and said, “The other ones are even harder!”
Indeed, the questions that we face today about where to give tzedakah are incredibly difficult and complex. The economic challenges of the last several years have likely increased the level of need in our own communities, while the growth of communication technology brings us into daily contact with people around the world facing poverty and injustice. In addition, the number of organizations to which to donate is growing rapidly. In the United States, the number of registered non-profit organizations grew by 19 percent from 1999-2009 (www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/412434-NonprofitAlmanacBrief2011.pdf). With increasing need, greater knowledge of need and more choices of where to donate, making decisions about where to give tzedakah is no easy task.
So how do we prepare Jewish students to tackle the challenge of giving tzedakah thoughtfully and responsibly? This article will introduce Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum, an eight-session curriculum produced by American Jewish World Service (AJWS), designed to educate middle school students to be thoughtful, intentional givers of tzedakah. The curriculum was released in August, 2012, and is available for download for free at www.wheredoyougive.org/education-portal. The curriculum is also part of Where Do You Give?, an initiative of AJWS designed to reimagine tzedakah for the 21st century. Through a national design competition, online interactive media at www.wheredoyougive.org and this curriculum and supplementary educational resources, Where Do You Give? engages the Jewish community in critical questions about where we give, to whom and why. In this article, I will describe the curriculum’s unique approach to tzedakah education and offer suggestions for how it can be implemented.
Why a tzedakah curriculum?
Before I describe the curriculum itself, let me take a step back and address the question: Who is AJWS and why is it distributing a tzedakah curriculum? AJWS is an organization that works to realize human rights and end poverty in the developing world. It supports community based organizations in Africa, Asia and the Americas that are improving their communities. The people in communities supported by AJWS are overcoming life-threatening challenges, including extreme poverty, lack of access to medical care, lack of access to education, environmental degradation, violence and discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity.
Because AJWS does not work in the United States or Israel, and because the people we support are not Jewish, we must often make the case to potential supporters that the populations with whom we work should be the recipients of their tzedakah. Many in the Jewish community feel an inherent obligation to provide for needs in the Jewish community and maybe also to address needs in their local, non-Jewish communities, but do not feel compelled to respond to global poverty. These instincts are important – they are often based on an intuitive sense of responsibility and community and they are validated by a range of Jewish sources. At the same time, they are instincts, and as such, they have often not been examined nor have they been tested against other options.
AJWS produced Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum so that the next generation of tzedakah-givers would make choices about tzedakah not merely based on instinct, but based on careful thought and analysis. The curriculum therefore exposes students to the global dimensions of poverty and injustice, challenging them to consider whether and how their giving could address people outside of their local and Jewish communities. It also offers Jewish texts that support a range of perspectives on how to make choices about which potential recipients to prioritize. The role of the curriculum is thus to open students’ eyes to the range of options and choices that are involved in giving tzedakah and to empower them to make their own decisions. While AJWS certainly hopes that students who use Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum will be motivated to give globally (and may even choose to give through AJWS), the primary goal of the curriculum is to educate students to be more thoughtful and intentional tzedakah-givers. At no point does the curriculum suggest to students to donate to AJWS, nor is this an expectation of schools that use the curriculum.
What makes Where Do You Give? unique
AJWS believes that Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum is unique in the field of tzedakah education. Its innovative approach is distinguished by several features:
- It empowers students to articulate their own tzedakah priorities and examine their giving decisions in relation to their own money.
Because the curriculum seeks to inspire students to make life-long commitments to intentional philanthropic giving, it offers many opportunities for students to articulate their priorities and practice making decisions about tzedakah. In the “Would You Rather” activity referenced at the beginning of this article, students confront a range of difficult decisions about tzedakah priorities and must make choices about where to give. Empowering students to make their own choices prepares them for the responsibility of making these decisions when they are older and have more money to donate.
- It integrates Jewish text, history, culture and values as authentic and relevant sources of wisdom about tzedakah.
While students are encouraged to express their own values and priorities, the curriculum does not expect students to make decisions about tzedakah without any guidance. Every unit contains Jewish texts which students analyze and debate in order to inform their thinking about tzedakah. For example, unit six, Where Do We Give? The Arguments, features a debate over where to allocate the class’s tzedakah. Students are assigned to represent different fictional organizations and are instructed to use Jewish texts provided to support their argument in favor of their organization.
- It situates tzedakah in the context of current social justice issues.
Too often, tzedakah education occurs in a vacuum. Students learn how much to give, which methods of giving are preferred and perhaps even which populations to prioritize, but the study of tzedakah is disconnected from a discussion of the social issues which tzedakah is meant to address. Units two and three, Why Do We Give Tzedakah? Power, Privilege and Responsibility, explore the distribution of wealth in the world and help students understand tzedakah as a critical tool for addressing social inequality and injustice. Tzedakah thus becomes relevant, urgent and a means for students to enact their commitment to tikkun olam.
- It incorporates technology and social media, connecting students to Where Do You Give?’s national conversation about giving.
Students today learn and communicate online through multiple forms of media. The curriculum therefore not only includes short videos, but it also provides a variety of opportunities for students to interact with the Where Do You Give? website (www.wheredoyougive.org). For example, after students play the “Would You Rather” game in school, they are encouraged to take the online “Would You Rather” quiz at home with a parent, discussing their responses and comparing them to the responses of other online quiz-takers. Engaging students in the website exposes them to others’ ideas about tzedakah and helps them understand that their learning is part of a broader conversation in the Jewish community about tzedakah. Use of the website makes the curriculum feel relevant to students and also demonstrates for them how the tools they use to communicate socially can also be used for positive social change.
- It fosters “productive discomfort,” a state in which students experience the dissonance and tension that provokes change and growth.
Because the curriculum hopes to have an impact on students’ own tzedakah-giving practices, it tries to elicit “productive discomfort” – a state in which students are challenged to the point of being uncomfortable enough that they must interrogate their assumptions and engage in productive intellectual and personal growth. In unit seven, How Much Do We Give?, after students watch a video about a family that sold its house and moved into one half its size in order to be able to give more tzedakah, they are asked what they would be willing to give up in order to be able to give more. These kinds of challenging questions can be uncomfortable for students, but it is this discomfort that provokes true learning and growth.
These features of Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum work together to create a unique approach to tzedakah education – one that makes tzedakah urgently relevant to students lives and provides students with the tools to participate responsibly in the mitzvah of tzedakah with knowledge and intention.
Implementing the curriculum
How can you bring this cutting-edge curriculum to your school or educational context? Here are several suggestions for how to implement the curriculum:
Consecutive Tzedakah Unit
Teach the curriculum as a unit on tzedakah in a concentrated period of time. Although the curriculum was designed for eight 45-minute sessions, it can easily be shortened or expanded to accommodate shorter or longer unit lengths.
Social Action or Tikkun Olam Club
Use excerpts from the curriculum to enrich the activities of a social action or tikkun olam club. Teach pieces of the curriculum at club meetings and/or share the curriculum with students as a resource for planning school-wide programs and activities.
Rosh Hodesh
Dedicate Rosh Hodesh to tzedakah. Facilitate an activity from the curriculum at each month’s Rosh Hodesh celebration. Similarly, unrelated to Rosh Hodesh, many of the activities in the curriculum can be facilitated as one-off programs.
Use Supplementary Resources
The curriculum is accompanied by several supplementary resources which are also available for download for free at www.wheredoyougive.org/education-portal. These resources are intended to support the use of the curriculum in different contexts. They include:
- Tzedakah Taking Root: A Guide to Building a Culture of Tzedakah
This resource assists educators in embedding the values of thoughtful and intentional tzedakah in their communities. It can be used along with the curriculum to share students’ learning with the broader school community. - The Year in Giving: Connecting Tzedakah to the Cycle of the Jewish Holidays
This resource helps educators integrate tzedakah into students’ learning and practice of the Jewish holidays.For each Jewish holiday, it suggests thematic links to tzedakah, links to specific activities from the curriculum and suggests social justice issues and tzedakah projects relevant to the holiday. - Making it Real: Guiding Students through a Tzedakah Allocations Process
This resource, produced in partnership with the Jewish Teen Funders Network, helps educators to support class efforts to distribute money that they have raised for tzedakah. This resource can be used alongside the curriculum, allowing students to concretize their learning by making real decisions to allocate real money. Throughout the curriculum, opportunities to incorporate the stages of the Tzedakah Allocations Process (TAP) are marked with the TAP icon.
Tzedakah education with care
According to Maimonides (Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:1), “We are obligated to be more careful in fulfilling the mitzvah of tzedakah than any other mitzvah.” The best way to ensure that our students are careful in their practice of tzedakah is to use the utmost care when we educate them about tzedakah. It is AJWS’s hope that Where Do You Give? A Tzedakah Curriculum is one component of a tzedakah education that is rigorous, thoughtful and careful and that inspires the next generation of Jews to fulfill the mitzvah of tzedakah with care and intention.