What is tzedakah?
Judaism expects each of us to give some of what we have to others. The Hebrew word tzedakah comes from the Hebrew word tzedek which means ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness’ or ‘doing the right thing.’ When people use the word tzedakah, they usually are referring to money people donate to help repair what is broken in our world.
Judaism also expects us to share our other resources with others. While tzedakah is usually money, donating other resources, like shoes or food or time, is usually called – Tikkun Olam - repairing what is broken in our world or Gimilut Chasadim - acts of ‘loving-kindness’.
Participation & Experiential Learning:
Participation is the most important thing. Amount doesn’t matter. Please encourage students to bring tzedakah every week. Please remind students and families that students have the opportunity to bring tzedakah every week in every class. The amount of the money each of us brings to donate is not important.
Judaism expects us to integrate our responsibility to care for others with our daily and weekly routines. All of us best remember what we learn by doing. We aim to teach giving tzedakah as a routine. Throughout their adult lives, our students will remember the concrete experience of bringing tzedakah to class. We hope that the repetition of donating money each week and deciding where to send our tzedakah collections each semester will help our students to continue to actively repair the world.
General Tzedakah Allocations Guidelines for Classes:
a. The lower the overhead, the farther our tzedakah donation goes.
b. Considering the above guide, all organizations whether Local, Regional, National, Global, Jewish, and/or Non-Jewish – may all be kosher.
c. We give to Humans and our planet first. We allocate tzedakah to animal organizations that help people - for example, guide dogs for blind people, horse riding/training for people with muscle diseases, etc.
For more information about what tzedakah is, please look at the following websites….
http://clickonjudaism.org/pages/what_is_tzedakah.html
http://data.ccarnet.org/cgi-bin/respdisp.pl?file=24&year=carr
For more information about giving tzedakah effectively, please look at these websites...
http://www.kavod.org/
For more examples of tzedakah organizations our students have chosen, please look at these websites...
http://www.ajws.org/
http://www.austinfoodbank.org/
http://www.austin-safeplace.org/
http://www.hopehouseaustin.com/
http://homefirstinc.org
http://www.jnf.org/site/
http://www.literacyaustin.org/
http://www.mealsonwheelsandmore.org/
http://www.peoplefund.org/