What Do You Have to Give?
Temple Bat Yam May 2010 Newsletter
A colleague, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz, recently shared with me this remarkable story. Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleep-over in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side of the car and a homeless man begging for food on the other.
“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal.” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequality, insisting that she wanted to do something. “What do you want to do,” her mom responded, “sell our house?” Warning: never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager! Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half of the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home (Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, January 23, 2009).
Eventually that is what the family did. The project— crazy and inspiring as it is— is chronicled in a book by father and daughter called The Power of Half. The book asks each of us the question: what could you live without, what do you have to give?
The Salwens were affluent parents who were trying to raise grounded and responsible children. Like many families, they worried about the lessons they were teaching their children as they worked hard to make their lives better and more financially comfortable. Most parents try to give their children the best opportunities possible. But sometimes parents get on a treadmill of providing more and more; sometimes it is difficult to know how much a family truly needs and what is, essentially, frosting on the cake—lovely, sweet, but not nourishing or sustaining.
Many of us spend time and money accumulating stuff. We worry about buying our children the latest, coolest clothes, or a car so that they can drive themselves safely back and forth to school, or we take fancy vacations. The recent recession may have given us a reality check, as our treadmill of acquisition has of necessity been slowed or even, in some cases, paused. I know of many families in our community who have had to downsize to make ends meet; but what about giving up some of what we have so that others can have something more?
This is what the Salwens did; they redefined who they were through what they gave rather than through what they possessed. And they discovered, by moving from a big house to a smaller home, that they had less space and stuff to isolate them from each other. They traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness—giving the half left over to those who need that half just to make a whole of something. Like so many things, the process of giving away, of choosing the charity and cause, had its own priceless reward. The family discussed not what they wanted but what they could give. In Jewish tradition we are taught that happiness comes, not from what we own, but from what we give.
As Hannah and her dad explain in their book—not everyone can sell their house and give half to charity, but “everyone has too much of something, time, talent, treasure.” Rabbi Moskowitz reminds us that we each have our own ‘half’—the half we need and the half others need more than us. Give it away and you may get more than you ever imagined in return.
