An Asynchronous Guide for Study on Giving Tuesday with Ammud
PREPARED BY SASS BROWN, AMMUD RABBINIC INTERN
Welcome!
Ammud’s mission is creating and cultivating a community that is for us by us where Jews of Color are able to build resilience and bring their fullest selves to Jewish learning and Torah. Ammud affirms, educates, and builds leadership among Jews of Color, supporting them to be empowered members and leaders of Jewish community and peoplehood.
Ammud’s vision is for Jewish communities and Jewish life to be made whole through inclusive wisdom and practice that is representative of our full racial and ethnic diversity as a people.
We offer this source sheet for those who want to add some Ammud-style Torah Study to your tzedakah giving at this time of year, elevating an important material act into an equally important spiritual one.
With so many voices encouraging you to give and telling you to feel excited about it, maybe you’re feeling tension between obligation and inspiration.
Giving tzedakah is a mitzvah, meaning, according to the centuries-old rabbinic understanding, it’s something we have to do. But also, no one can truly compel our action, which is why we often see appeals to how meaningful giving can be. Will we give on Giving Tuesday because we should do it or because we feel inspired and want to?
Jewish texts say, yes! This intersection between should and want to is a classic point of Jewish spirituality and action. Keep reading to go deeper on this Jewish spiritual tension, and connect it to this time of public and personal giving.
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The aim of this learning sheet is for you to:
• Reflect on where you first learned to give and remember those who taught you
• Study text about how giving connects to love and G-d
• Consider the Jewish concept of keva vs. kavanah, or routine vs. spiritual inspiration in relation to your giving
Grounding on Giving Tuesday
Tuesday is Special!
G-d saw that it was good
In the first creation story of the Torah, G-d sees the steps in creation and calls them good. Only one day is called good twice - the Third Day (or Tuesday), when the land, oceans, and plants are added. Over the centuries, Judaism has thought of Tuesday as a day of extra blessing in the world - perfect for a bit of extra giving.
Let’s take a moment to invite ourselves fully into this study. You see the emails asking you to give, and you know that giving tzedakah is an important Jewish value. Who else taught you to give?
Gemara: Rabbi Elazar is a Giver
Rabbi Elazar would give a peruta (a small coin) to a poor person, and then pray.
He cited the verse (Psalms 17:15): “I will encounter your (G-d’s) face through righteousness.”
In the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Batra 10a), the Gemara remembers Rabbi Elazar’s specific way of giving. He gave a small amount, regularly, and then immediately followed up with prayer. He quotes Psalms, saying that after giving he hopes to see G-d’s face.
Grounding on Giving Tuesday
Whose face do you see when you think of giving?
1. Think of a person who taught you about giving money, resources, or time. Maybe they were an elder in your family, or a beloved teacher. Take a moment to focus on them - recalling their face, their voice, their presence. Maybe it was early in your life or later in your life.
2. What did they tell you about giving? Did they have any particular stories about giving or receiving help?
3. If you want to, answer question one and two again with another person. Invite these folks into your Torah study as another voice that inspires your tzedakah.
Love and Giving
Commanded Love in the Daily Shema
Jews who recite the traditional prayers say the Shema every morning and night. The Shema is a set of important verses from Torah that declare G-d’s singular nature, framed by related brachot (blessings). One of the key themes is G-d giving us love, and commanding love in return. This is one of the most regular Jewish encounters with the spiritual tension between commanded and inspired behavior.
What can it mean for G-d to command us to love? And for that matter, how does a person love The Divine?
Some of our ancestors’ answers to these questions lie in the brachot of the Shema, which equate love and mitzvot. Take “Ahavat Olam,” “Eternal Love,” the blessing immediately preceding the verses of Shema in the evening.
Eternal Love, you have loved the House of Yisrael, your people. You have taught us Torah, commandments, laws, and judgements. Therefore, Hashem or G-d, when we lie down and when we get up, we will talk about your laws, and be happy and rejoice in the words of your Torah learning, your commandments, and your laws forever and ever. Because they are our life, and extend our days, and we will practice them day and night. Your love will not be taken from us forever. Blessed are you, Hashem, who loves the people Yisrael.
Put simply, G-d has loved our people by giving them commandments, and we can love G-d back by acting in a holy, divinely inspired way. This includes the many, many mitzvot between human beings, like visiting the sick, hosting guests, and giving money. This is true whether we feel duty or inspiration on any given day.
When we act in a divinely-inspired way towards other humans, whether we do it because we feel obligated or out of personal desire, we are doing the mitzvah of loving G-d.
Love and Giving
Giving money is specifically mentioned in the Shema as a way to love G-d
Following the Ahavat Olam blessing, the first paragraph of the Shema again mentions the commandment to love G-d. This paragraph is often called by its first word - “V’ahavta,” “You will love.”
Devarim 6:5
You will love Hashem your G-d with your whole heart, with your whole self, and with all of your might
The word translated as “with all your might,” is a bit odd. It literally means something like “all of your very-ness.” The mishnaic rabbis knew these needed to be interpreted, and they wrote down their ancient understanding 2000 years ago. Mishnah Berakhot 9:5 says that “your might” is “your money.” Jews have said this twice a day for centuries. It’s a pretty central idea of how we can show G-d our love.
Giving our money and resources to tzedakah, whether you do it out of a sense of duty or spiritual inspiration, is a Jewish act that G-d feels as love.
Giving and Abundance
We can show love by telling others what we need and allowing them to help us
We can learn another important lesson from how G-d’s love is described in these prayers. G-d shows the People of Yisrael love by telling us exactly what G-d wants from us, and then giving us the will to do it. We can emulate this kind of G-dly love in our own communities, by being open about what we need, and allowing others to support us.
When the people in our communities tell us what they want to receive, we can view this as an act of divinely inspired love. When our respected leaders accurately assess and report what resources they need to keep our communities thriving, this is an emulation of G-d’s communication with us. We then have the opportunity to respond to requests for aid, reciprocating in a loving way.
Should we give every day, or on big days like Giving Tuesday?
To answer this question, we can bring in another tension from Jewish prayer: keva vs. kavanah, or routine vs. spiritual inspiration.
You can probably quickly think of things that you have to do, but are not incredibly inspiring. Maybe personal hygiene falls here - we brush our teeth, we clean our skin, and we rarely expect to come away feeling like we’ve done something of high spiritual importance. Yet, over time, caring for ourselves is a grand spiritual act.
We can also think of things that are deeply inspiring, and experienced rarely. Holidays are one example, a moment that happens once a year, with lots of preparation and intention, which would seem hard to recreate at another time. Yet, without the daily routine of eating, waking, and sleeping, we wouldn’t circle the year to another holy celebration.
Giving and Abundance
Judaism thinks both routine and inspiration are important. Doing something mundane on a daily basis can lead to deep spiritual inspiration, and moments of high inspiration can support our regular routine.
The Gemara (BT Berakhot 13a) uses the Shema, which is both commanded and spiritual, to teach this tension explicitly:
Learn
from [saying the Shema] that commandments require
spiritual intention
Giving a small amount regularly, like a quarter or a dollar to someone on the street, can make the act of giving at a time like Giving Tuesday feel normal. Large, inspirational days like Giving Tuesday may invite people into a practice of giving that they can extend into their regular life.
Knowing your limits leads to abundance
You may feel inspired by the idea of a Jewish obligation to give, or by the chance to show G-d and other people love. It’s also important to know your limits, as the Shulchan Arukh, a foundational book of Jewish law, says, “It is a positive Biblical command to give Charity according to one’s means.”
At the beginning of this guide, we saw how Tuesday is traditionally special, based on G-d calling it good two times in the first chapter of the Torah. Two acts of creation happen on this day - the dry land and watery seas are separated, and then the earth sprouts with abundant grasses and trees. It is only after land’s limits are set that it can bear fruit.
This is true of our giving, too. We should each know how much money we can give while staying on firm ground, and we should each know where too giving much may find us in deep water. Knowing this will allow you to cultivate your own tzedakah practice for years to come.
Love is Action
Aswe learned from the Shema and its blessings, recited two times a day in traditional Jewish prayer, Judaism understands love as action. We show our love not just by saying we feel it, but by doing something to support and care for the people and communities we cherish.
We can also understand appeals for financial support as a form of G-dly, loving communication. If leaders of a community we trust have accurately assessed what they need to help that community thrive, they can follow G-d’s example by communicating what actions - including giving - will help demonstrate love for the community.
Finally, giving tzedakah is not only a way to demonstrate love for the people who receive it, but also for the Divine. We do not believe that we are incapable of meaningful action. We can act in a divinely-inspired, loving way in the world, including by giving “with all of our might.”
