no good deed-- pt 3

Then I took a class on the History of the Holocaust, and I started thinking about what the diaspora meant for my family, what Americanization has taken away from us. I thought about the hole inside of me that I walk around with as a mixed race person. The lost, sunken feeling of having no place where you really fit in. So I started learning more about Judaism. I took a class in Kaballah. I bought books. I bought a Torah. We watched movies. We baked challah. We lit candles on Friday nights. We got drunk on Purim. We dipped apples in honey on Rosh Hashannah. We fasted on Yom Kippur. And I didn't become a "believer", but I felt better.

I also took on responsibility, and I'm only just now starting to realize what that means-- the full extent of that responsibility. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that being G-d's "chosen people" doesn't mean that Jews are more special or loved than other people. It means that we are responsible, like a first-born child, for the rest of G-d's children. Like a parent, She places Her expectations, her hopes, her dreams onto us. She might love us in a different way from her other children. Not more, just different. So here I am, and I've chosen to acknowledge that I've been chosen. And I hate being responsible.

Here's another passage from Rabbi Kushner, from Chapter 3 of To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking:
"The obligation of tzedaka is usually translated as 'charity' but really means 'doing the right thing'... Charity implies that I give to the poor because I am a generous person. Tzedaka means that I give to the poor, even if I don't feel like giving, because Judaism tells me I should. It tells me that G-d has chosen to make me His intermediary in passing something on...I have no right to keep that portion of my wealth any more than the postman has the right to keep for himself a check addressed to me. If you saw the play or movie Fiddler on the Roof, you may remember an exchange early in the play in which a man gives a beggar a coin. The beggar tells him, 'Last week you gave me more.' The man answers, 'I had a bad week,' to which the beggar responds, 'Just because you had a bad week, why should I suffer?" ... We may have a philosophical difference between Judaism and Christianity here... In that famous passage in the Gospels (Matthew 26:6-13) in which a woman pours expensive oil on Jesus' head and the disciples scold her, saying she could have sold the oil and given the money to the poor, Jesus supports the woman, saying, 'You will always have the poor with you'-- that is, what you don't do for the poor today, you will be able to do for them tomorrow or next week-- 'but you will not always have me.' The words 'the poor you will always have with you' come from the Torah... but they have the exact opposite meaning. 'For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore I command you to open your hand to your poor and needy brother.' In other words, because there will always be poor people, society has to find a way of sustaining them without making them depend on your having some money left over after your shopping and vacation."

Then Rabbi Kushner tells a story:
"A man who is down on his luck tells his sad story to two passerby. One is moved to tears, embraces him, and gives him five dollars because that is all he can afford. The second man interrupts him halfway through and gives him fifty dollars just to shut him up. Who has done the better thing?... People... regularly choose the first person because his heart was in his gift. But... by Jewish law, the second man was better because fifty dollars will help the beggar ten times as much as five dollars will, and the purpose of tzedaka is to help the poor, not to give us opportunities to feel virtuous."