Posts Tagged as ‘tzedakah’

April 30, 2009

Canned beans or bananas?

Every year, between the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, many Jewish congregants take home a brown paper bag to be filled with non-perishable food for people in need.  It helps fill food banks, and is emblematic of the principle of tzedakah, or charity, which plays an important role in most major [...]

July 31, 2008

What would Maimonides think of Kiva?

(First blog Milestone reached: a blog post inspired by a reader’s comment. The next milestone will be when the same thing happens and I don’t know the reader personally).
A blog reader of mine brought up Kiva in response to yesterday’s post, which I thought was interesting – both because I didn’t mention Kiva and because [...]

July 31, 2008

Reflections on Maimonides’ 8 levels of Charity (tzedakah)

Good timing. Just as I’ve started this blog I came across a description of charity (the Hebrew word tzedakah) by the 12th century Jewish scholar and physician Maimonides
Maimonides wrote a code of Jewish law, the Mishnah Torah, based on the Rabbinic oral tradition, and he described charity from the least to the most honorable as [...]