Today is Shabbat Shuva. The Sabbath of Return. Historically, this was one of two Shabbatot that the rabbi would give a sermon. Passover, so you would know how to prepare your kitchen and today so you would be prepared for Yom Kippur.

We are told in the High Holiday liturgy that there are three things, tefilah, teshuva, and tzedakah that will change the decree.

You’ve already done a good job of tefilah, prayer, this morning. Last night we looked a little at teshuvah, and how to make amends. Today we are going to look a little a tzedakah. But first, a story:

The Talmud tells us that Rabbi Akiva had a daughter. We don’t know her name. But we do know that the astrologers of their day predicted that she would die on her wedding day. Akiva was naturally “extremely worried about this matter.” But eventually, she was to married. He decided to say nothing about the prediction.  This version is based on the retelling by Rabbi Irwin Huberman: (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 156b)

“On the day of the wedding, Rabbi Akiva held his breath. By the end of the day, he was relieved to see that his daughter had survived.

The next day, Rabbi Akiva met with her.

“My daughter,” he asked. “What have you done to be worthy of such a close escape?”

As his unsuspecting daughter began to revisit the events of her wedding day, her father ultimately realized what had happened.

The Talmud recounts that, as she sat in her bridal chamber prepared to enjoy her sumptuous wedding meal, she heard the cry of a pauper in the doorway. He was asking for a morsel of food.

Everyone was so busy celebrating that no one heard him.

But the bride did. She rose from her chair and handed her food to the pauper.

As she re-entered the bridal chamber, she stopped to rearrange her hair — or adjust her veil — and finding no place to lay down her broach, she stuck it in the wall.

When she pulled the broach pin out, she realized that she had stabbed a snake which had been hiding in the wall.

The snake had been poised to strike her in the chair where she had originally been seated. But because she had moved from her original place to help the homeless man, it was she who killed the snake, rather than the other way round.

Rabbi Akiva sighed, and then smiled. “You have done a good deed, an act of charity,” he said. “And charity can save us from death.”” From Proverbs.

So somehow, making sure that the poor had enough to eat she saved her own life.

Now tzedakah, translated here as charity—is really more like righteous giving. It is from the same root as tzedek, justice, a tzadik, a righteous person. Charity is gift that comes from the heart. Tzedakah is an obligation. A commandment. Something we have to do.

So it is appropriate on this Shabbat Shuva, we look at Maimonides (Rambam) 8 levels of tzedakah. He viewed it like a ladder. And if you were here for Hebrew School on Wednesday you would have watched me climb an actual ladder:

1. The person who gives reluctantly and with regret.
2. The person who gives graciously, but less than one should.
3. The person who gives what one should, but only after being asked.
4. The person who gives before being asked.
5. The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives, although the recipient knows the identity of the donor.
6. The person who gives without making his or her identity known.
7. The person who gives without knowing to whom he or she gives. The recipient does not know from whom he or she receives.
8. The person who helps another to become self-supporting by a gift or a loan or by finding employment for the recipient.
   (Hilkot, Matenot, Aniyim 10:7-14)

This last one is like the adage, give a person a fish and they will eat for a day. Teach a person to fish, they will fish for a life time. Of course, there was a little store, next to Art’s Tavern in Glen Arbor, MI that used to have art work that said that if you teach a man to fish, he will have expenses to last a life time. Lures, poles, rods, nets.

Our group then discussed the various levels of the ladder, without me climbing on one. One felt strongly that the goal is to be as generous as we can and that the levels in the middle don’t matter as much. There was some discussion of how we budget—and a retelling of the old Tevye story from Fiddler on the Roof. The one where the beggar asks the butcher for his weekly handout. “Here Reb Nahum, here’s one kopek.” “One kopek, last week you gave me two.” “I had a bad week.” “So if you had a bad week, why should I suffer?”

I had always assumed that Lazar, the butcher, was rude and hadn’t met his obligation. Others felt that the beggar was rude. Maybe they both are. Maybe the better model is in the story The Hands of G-d as retold by Rabbi Larry Kushner. When the poor janitor finds the twelve loaves of challah left by the rich man in the Holy Ark, he gives two to tzedakah, showing that even poor people are obligated to give tzedakah. In fact, historically, poor people give more to organizations on a percentage basis than rich.

We talked about making tzedakah a habit. And the fact that our students made tzedakah boxes this year.

Many of us get mail solicitations for charity every day. They are from a range of organizations. One year, as part of an adult study class we collected all of them for the month of December. How you choose which organizations to give to could be a subject for a whole adult study class. How do you decide what makes the most difference. If you take 100 dollars is it better to give $100 to one organization or split it into $25 gifts?

We could study this all day—and study is important. http://www.jtfn.org/sites/default/files/docs/resources/maimonides_ladder_and_tzedakah_texts.pdf

However, the suggestion, the commandment really, is that we do it. At CKI we do it in various ways. To those of you who give so generously to the Rabbi’s Discretionary fund, part of those funds go to organizations like Mazon, Food for Greater Elgin, The Community Crisis Center, where as was pointed out, we know the agency but not the individual recipient. Very rarely do I give a direct hand out. However, our community garden which fills the commandment of leaving the corners of our field for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger. That little, mighty garden has fed a lot of people this year. With fresh produce, which is sometimes the hardest thing for poor people to get through soup kettles and agencies.

And as someone pointed out, don’t forget to bring your canned goods for the Community Crisis Center or your checks for Food for Greater Elgin, for the Kol Nidre Food Drive. This fits within Rambam’s levels. This fulfills the question that the prophet Isaiah asks about Yom Kippur—“Is this the fast that I desire? No, rather it is to share your bread with the hungry and to house the homeless and to clothe the naked.”

May we each be sealed for a blessing in the Book of Life. L’shanah Tovah.