The First Rule of Tz'dakah

...I have seen a few dollars buy time for a woman who does just that: comforts...

...Bava Batra 9b) Surrounded by the chaos of our world, bombarded with truths from varied sources, some sublime, some moronic, it is time to reflect on our own truths, to consider this wisdom that transcends time and place and reaches into the deepest recesses of the Jewish heart...

...This is the poet's verse of verses, a reflection on the essence of living: 1 praise You, for I am awesomely, wondrously made...

...It buys spoons for those who must be spoonfed...

...I know a hundred dollars that bought some deaf woman a weekend at a convention of fellow Jews that brought her warmth, friends, the end of loneliness...

...I have a simple answer: Tz'dakah...

...Your work is wonderful...

...and pays salaries for spoonfeeders to do the work...

...We no longer hear chatter of weather reports, ball scores, the latest murder or mugging in the park...

...Some live hard lives, with families sharing the deprivations with joy...

...I know three dollars that last year bought a tree that comforted parents on the death of a child...

...ation and the penpoint...

...How are they to afford themselves frequent and powerful glimpses of these stunning events...

...Witness five dollars in toys to shatter a child's depression...

...And another three dollars that bought another tree that elated other parents on the birth of another child...

...hands that wove dreams into a tablecloth that now adorns a Shabbas table in Michigan or British Columbia, hands raised in defiance at bureaucracies that refuse to see...

...And as our money and efforts radiate outward in many directions, we see these people, listen to them, either through words or silence, and learn wisdoms unique to this world of Tz'dakah...

...It is as true as any truth I have encountered: Whoever runs to do Tz'dakah, the Holy One, blessed be He, will find for that person both the money and the appropriate recipients for all his Tz'dakah-desires...

...Psalm 139:14) King David—the lyrical poet par excellence—and the other poets, the obstetricians, the electronmicroscopists, and some stray others have made this a pursuit of their beings— to be aware, as always as possible, that all aspects of life are more than mere curiosities to be tested and played with...

...Witness fifteen dollars to take a dying old man to dinner and Radio City Music Hall—to him, a palace, though millions of New Yorkers might take it for granted every day...

...His articles appear frequently in these pages...

...That, too, is beyond me...

...Money bought time, liberation from the day-to-day, so that someone, at least one person, would be available to comfort another...

...This is possible in a number of ways, at the very least: 1. Money: Money becomes magic...

...Hands mold hope from depression and images of majesty from despair...

...And I know another sum that bought a glob of clay that let a one-eyed hunchback man rebuild his life through the fashioning of necklaces...

...Though their lives can never be ours, still, we can set ourselves to discovering them, and the "everyday people" who at their own pace and rhythm and with their own unique style do the same . . . people we have underestimated (including ourselves) who collect furniture for immigrants, unassuming people who volunteer their day, arranging flowers for a fund raiser for some Great Project, people as people who remember to write that specific note of concern that gives hope to the lonely and the teenager who makes faces so an autistic baby might smile, the committee people running here and there to buy a Westminster Torah, saved from the Nazis, for their synagogue...

...All the textures of experience are in that channel between imaginDanny Siegel is a contributing editor of this magazine...

...3. The wonder of people (Part II): We will soon discover that it is not just the miracle-workers who render such services to others...

...It buys gasoline to transport the old when they have become too old to drive...

...Some wonder-workers I know sleep two hours a night, perhaps three...

...That is the first rule of Tz'dakah work: never to lose our sense of wonder, of awe...

...Hands are no longer just hands, but rather the hands that bathed a neglected child...

...There really is no danger of that, once the involvement begins...

...And the electronmicroscopists have an advantage...

...We hear of her wonders...

...The first move is ours, though...

...It goes through metamorphoses, becoming now food packages for Passover, a hat that brings dignity to one who needs just that— a new hat...

...It is not the only way, to be sure...

...At certain moments, time permitting, energy permitting...

...It buys sewing machines for retraining mental patients...

...If they are so preoccupied with routines and repetitious jobs and errands—mailing their letters and writing their forms down to the last detail—how are they to be allowed the opportunities to share the joys of the Awe-struck and Wonder-eyed...

...The principle is simple: the more opportunities we find to give of our resources, the more we shall discover those with the Magic Touch, the ones who will teach us, in turn, to touch, gently when needed, or with great unknown strengths, if that, too, might be the need of the moment...

...They are, rather, sublime products of a divine handiwork, masterpieces to be gazed upon with absolute concentration, stared at in awe, admired not for themselves, but as a Psalm of reality in praise of the Creator...

...Some are blessed with visions that only a handful in each generation may share: Henrietta Szold, for example, diminutive Miss Szold changing the entire face of health care in Israel...

...That's the foundation of Tz'dakah work...

...The Magic Touch is contagious, and though we may not reach the heights of the Righteous, we are allowed a view of ourselves that says, "Just maybe, I, too, am capable...

...That is beyond me...

...Whether strolling through the rain or sitting at their desks, their eyes see beyond things, around things, inside dimensions of time, elements of the world that the so-called "general population" never gets the time to see...

...1 am intimately aware of it all...

...We are reminded of hands threatening to raise hell in the streets if the retarded do not get a decent, dignified group home, if the old do not become part of the workforce of the nation, if the blind do not get budgets to have their braille-books set...

...The list is endless—the grandmother babysitting another's infant, despite her own pains and fainting fits and a multitude of other illnesses...

...But Tz'dakah work opens doors to great distances and visions, colors of life and arrangements of the human soul that are available at any time, should the opportunity be embraced...

...They say "O, my luve is like a red, red rose,/ that's newly sprung in June" and new images explode on the consciousness of humankind...

...All that lyrical phraseology sounds nice...

...We are reminded that we, so steeped in routine, so chained to inconsequen-tials, we are reminded that we, too, DANNY SIEGEL may be awestruck...

...And a lady so far away from us we may never live to see her, a lady called the Mother of the Soldiers, smashing loneliness, and exhaustion, be it with tea or a sandwich or a warm bed and roof on a drizzly night...

...But what of the so-called "general population," the shoppers, the insurance salespeople, the systems analysts and car mechanics...

...Money—miraculous, wondrous, awesome...

...And the poets, too, at least in the popular grasp of the word...

...Obstetricians have an advantage...

...Five of the fifteen dollars for a ticket to a show—and the man was a king...

...4. Finally—the stories: When Tz'dakah is done, we have exchanged worlds...

...Suddenly we hear of some individual who has chosen a Mitz-vah—to take the blind woman of Jerusalem to the beauty parlor on Fridays, for one queen to greet another in appropriate style...

...2. The wonder of people (Part I): Seeking out the miracle-workers, the Patient, the Devoted and Just of our People, seeing maestros and maestras of the human soul at work restores our own sense of awe...

...Even hands that surround the shoulders of one who weeps, touching just so, yielding comfort, gentleness and warmth...

...I often quote a particular passage in the Talmud, concluding my Tz'dakah thoughts with the hope the centuries of Jewish tradition offers...

...We hear of this aunt who worries that unemployed immigrants from Russia and Iran should have work—and hires and hires and hires them beyond her means...

...Awe and wonder are daily with them...

...We hear offers—a car at the disposal of young people too distant from home for Pesach, unable to pay air fares— a chance to drive all night and through the next day from Chicago to Boston, New York to Miami, for a Seder at home...

...And the weeper—alone, perhaps all alone in the world, her dead, his dead, lying there on a bed, waiting for a Comforter...

...They are ever and always priming themselves to test dissimilar notions, rubbing them together, making new, wonderful combinations...

...They are everywhere...

...They are forever delivering babies, bringing new, fresh life into this world, pausing to observe origins, innocence, a hundred miracles at a single moment: how breathing begins, how sound is made, how, emerging from the cheesy substance called vernix caseosa, a human being begins to grope through moments and new-found spaces...

...We see the sister of a friend, a barbershop owner, a CP.A., a child, bakers, toy makers, students, even ourselves, doing, to some measured degree, the same...

...They are forever scraping the edges of structures and shapes that send messages and mold eyes and ears and somehow, someway make for seeing and hearing and the chemistry of life...

...But we should never think that it takes only Big Money to work magic...

...Once we have done that, we discover infinite possibilities...

...I also know millions of dollars that did this and that: built schools, purchased canes and crutches, made great libraries of Judaica...

...Life becomes a song, a shadow, a sailing ship, withering grass...

...A pair of shoes is no longer just a pair of shoes, but leather from distant places, an inclosing of the foot, protection from harm, an invitation to wanderings...

...It seems that, as we open ourselves (the money, the time to think it out, the summoning of powers of wisdom), then the opportunities, and people, and stories present themselves to us in great number...