I’ll Take Maimonides Over Peter Singer

Mik Moore is the editor of jspot.org, a project of Jewish Funds for Justice. This is his first contribution to the Daily Shvitz.

Earlier this week, I sat down for lunch with several co-workers to talk about our personal philanthropy. How did we make decisions about our tzedekah? What motivated us? Where did our money go?

Let me back up for a second and provide some context. This is a topic of no small interest in my job, because we are a public foundation. That means we give away money, but unlike most foundations you’ve heard of, we aren’t funded through an endowment. We raise our own budget each year.

In the Jewish world, we are unique – a Jewish foundation whose grantmaking is focused on supporting community organizing in low-income communities, mostly immigrants and people of color.

So, back to lunch. We all went around and spoke about our personal tzedakah. For many of us, myself included, we were not terribly strategic about our giving. Although there is consensus among us that poverty issues are a priority, we often gave significant amounts of money to support causes that had nothing to do with poverty. The reason for giving? Usually because we were asked to give by a close friend or relative. We were giving mostly for them, not for the cause.

As the conversation progressed, one of us raised the question of anonymous vs non-anonymous giving. The example cited with greatest disapproval was the practice by one Jewish Federation to publish and distribute a list the exact dollar amount of all of its contributors. This was an egregious enough sin to convince one of our lot to forgo future contributions.

Stop. Fast forward a few days. I’m reading Jewcy and enjoying the mutual admiration society forming between Joey Kurtzman and Peter Singer over whether or not the former should be pleasuring himself in front of the world for his $1000 contribution to fight global poverty.