Two decades ago, after leaving the Wall Street Journal, one of my wife Natalie’s first jobs in the Jewish world was working for a nascent project at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation to send Jewish children’s books to families every month.
The idea was brilliantly simple: Children want their parents to read to them at bedtime. If they get a book in the mail with their name on it, they’ll run to their parent and beg/demand for them to read it. Fertile soil. Now plant the seed of a story about Shabbat, Jewish holidays, or the like, and you’ve created a moment of Jewish education that may not have existed before.
For its first five years, Natalie led the book selection committee. She worked with authors and illustrators and publishers. It wasn’t a simple process (and still isn’t), and she certainly learned that you can’t satisfy everyone.
Natalie eventually went on to other work. But over the last 21 years, the PJ Library has reached 670,000 Jewish families and shipped over 50 million books. And evaluation research has shown that many of them are significantly more engaged in Jewish life and Jewish education as a result. Pretty amazing.
Harold Grinspoon has long shared that the idea for PJ came from Dolly Parton, who passed away this week. In case you missed it, one of Dolly’s most significant legacies is her Imagination Library, a program that sends over 3 million children’s books every month to kids who might not have them otherwise. And that’s just part of her philanthropic legacy, which has included education, direct aid to people in poverty, medical research, and disaster recovery. I kind of wish that one of the many headlines about her this week had read, “Major philanthropist and humanitarian, who was also a great songwriter, entertainer, and feminist, dies at age 80.”
“And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you” (Deuteronomy 28:2). So says Moses as he sums up his second major address in the final book of the torah. Rabbi Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub, the second Modzitzer Rebbe (1886-1947), observes that the word v’hisigucha, “overtake you,” seems redundant: if the blessings come upon you, isn’t it obvious that they will reach you?
“Rather,” he says, “there are those whom the Ineffable has blessed with fortune, wealth, and abundant blessings, but who lack the proper understanding (hasaga) of how to use their wealth and goodness. In that case, their wealth it is not a blessing to them. Therefore, the Torah says v’hisigucha from the language of hasaga: that you should also possess the understanding of how to conduct yourself properly with your wealth. This understanding itself is one of the blessings.”
Wealth, and knowing what to do with it, has long been a challenge of human life, and it remains so today. The Wall Street Journal, my wife’s old employer, recently ran an article about “landmaxxing,” with the opening line: “It is no longer enough for the superrich to own one mansion on a street. Now, they want two or three—and sometimes the entire block.” From Orson Welles’s Charles Foster Kane to the billionaires of today, it seems that in every generation we humans have to re-learn Hillel’s maxim, “The greater your possessions, the greater your worry.” Or, in the words of Notorious B.I.G., “Mo Money, Mo Problems.”
Why, despite all the blessings that wealth might bring, does it take an extra blessing of insight to live well with it? Perhaps because wealth is just like everything else in life: You can’t take it with you. “Every moment of our lives, our suffering, our clinging to our lives, drives us out of our lives—away from home,” writes Rabbi Alan Lew. Wealth, the desire for it and the fear of losing it once we have it, is one of those things a lot of human beings cling to. More than the wealth itself, it’s that clinging that’s the real problem.
It takes spiritual effort to recognize that the clinging is even going on. As Alan Lew continues, “Every moment, our awareness brings us back—returns us to ourselves, because we need to return, need to come back.” Perhaps that’s why we read this verse just before Rosh Hashanah, to help us discern what we’re clinging to and the ways we’re clinging to it.
My friend David Geller, a retired wealth advisor and alum of our Kivvun program, asks wealthy people to imagine their funeral. One version of the funeral is that people give the usual eulogies about what an accomplished person the departed was. Some family members speak. It’s lovely and touching.
The other version of the funeral includes not only the family, but the director of the local food pantry, who talks about the thousands of people the deceased helped to feed, or the principal of the school who shares how many children their wealth helped to teach, or the rabbi (or head of a Jewish mindfulness organization?) who lovingly remembers how their financial gifts helped so many people connect with their roots and live meaningful lives. (David has a terrific blog on this stuff that you should subscribe to.)
My grandfather Hymie used to say, “Rich or poor, it’s good to have money.” That’s true. It’s also true that money can’t buy happiness (or love, per the Beatles). For that, spiritual practice is required, no matter how much or how little we might imagine we possess.
For Reflection & Conversation
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How do you feel about your relationship with money? Do you feel a sense of clinging when money comes up? Or perhaps security, openness, or generosity? As we move towards Rosh Hashanah, how might you want to improve your relationship with wealth and money in the coming year? How might your spiritual practice help you do so?