Our President Ruth Messinger met with some adorable, charitable four-year-old students at the JCC Manhattan’s Nursery School this morning to thank them for their generous contribution to our Nepal Earthquake Emergency Relief Fund. The students organized a bake sale last week after learning about the devastating Nepal earthquake, raising more than $1,000 for our Nepal Fund! The students …
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Originally published on the blog of Pursue: Action for a Just World. On June 20, Pursuers will join AJWS and Global Circle to see the winning entries from the Where Do You Give? National Design Competition and engage with innovative speakers about giving in the 21st century. As a preview to the event, we asked speaker …
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Originally posted on the Global Circle blog. We know there just aren’t enough gallery openings in NYC these days, which is why we’re hosting one just for you. Earlier this year AJWS launched the Where Do you Give? National Design Competition, challenging artists to create new vehicles for giving tzedakah that reflect our increasingly interconnected, global …
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Originally posted on the blog of Where Do You Give? On February 3, 2012 the Yale School of Management held its 7th Annual Conference on Philanthropy: “Beyond Best Practices: Financing and Implementing Social Change.” The conference highlighted discussions that have been ricocheting around the philanthropy sector and there a few we just can’t get out …
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Originally posted on the blog of Where Do You Give? In today’s world, the opportunity to engage in the work of social change is, literally, at our fingertips. But, does this newfound accessibility make us better donors? Adene Sacks and Dawne Bear Novicoff talk about our role as donors in an age of interconnectedness and …
Read MoreParashat Metzora describes the outbreak of “an eruptive plague upon a house” and the series of procedures the owner and priest must go through to check and cure it. The midrash on our parashah suggests several acts that could cause this oddity—a spiritual malady affecting an external physical object like a home.
Read MoreThis week’s Torah reading, Tzav, discusses the sacrificial system that is prescribed for the Israelites, but its title teaches us an important lesson with implications beyond the sacrificial rites. The portion’s opening lines read: “And God spoke to Moses saying, “Command Aaron and his sons as follows…”
Read MoreWhen I visited some of the poorest neighborhoods in Cancun with AJWS in 2010, my greatest fear was not what I would see, but what I might feel. I worried that I would feel—as so many people do—that I needed to fight for justice so that I could save the people I met there, providing for them what they could not provide themselves. This sentiment is common, but dangerous and demeaning, because a belief that the privileged must save the poor assumes that people in need lack the ability to shape their own destinies; that it is a lack of aptitude or ability that lies at the core of their misfortune.
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