A Torah of Money

Talking about the role of money in the life of the community makes most of us uncomfortable. Yet virtually every synagogue needs more money than it collects in dues and tuition in order to operate and to provide a rich Jewish life for the congregation. I must admit that I suddenly felt apprehensive myself after deciding to write about this topic. But given the realities of this year’s financial atmosphere, the topic takes on added significance.

I turned to the article “A Group Discussion About Money” (Reconstructionism Today, Winter 1999/2000) from which much of this column is taken. The article is a discussion of the workshop “A Torah of Money: Values, Money and Your Community,” facilitated by Rabbi Shawn Zevit.

According to Rabbi Zevit, “Our need now is to become as comfortable talking about money as we do about sexuality and disabilities. That’s the Talmud’s approach, to treat money and resources openly. But it’s not so easy in our communities, where there are sometimes strong anti-institutional feelings associated with the money culture of organized Jewish life. Our historic experience of persecution and displacement has involved money as a tool, not merely of status and power but of survival. Much of this has been internalized in our communities.”

Rabbi Zevit describes the “Torah of Money” as a Jewish values-based approach to human and financial resources in our communities. This means approaching our material resources with an expectation of finding godliness or holiness there. We have to become comfortable talking about money in order to build trust, to build relationships and to build communities, which is what good fundraising is all about.

Our attitude toward the challenges of having enough money is critical. It gets tricky to deal with money when there’s a feeling of crisis or scarcity. In contrast, the Torah offers us an attitude of abundance, to appreciate what we have and then to move forward. For example, during the building of the Mishkan in the desert, people brought so much that the artisans pleaded with Moshe to stop them.” We should only have that problem today!

A word about dues. Dues can be viewed as part of our citizenship in the Jewish community, not as the cost of buying services. Paying dues is a contemporary way to carry out the traditional sense of responsibility to support Jewish communal life.

At Bnai Keshet we have integrated values-based decision-making in many ways and it is a great strength of our congregation. Our dues structure, the workings of our committees and task forces, often around difficult decisions, reflect community-based processes and choices.

How do congregations handle this juxtaposition of values-based decision-making and growing expenditures, especially when there’s a shortfall? Rabbi Zevit encourages us to build discussions about money, resources, building fund and so on around the question “What do we really want for our community?” The study and the conversation are part of building community that will be capable of effective fund raising. Having a clear communal vision and exploring what our tradition and contemporary approaches have to say are central to developing a values-based approach to financial resources.

Jill and Lauren