"Behind Every Great Fortune..."
Or what is behind a whole bunch of them
In the year 2020, Americans gave an estimated $471 billion dollars to charitable causes, a 5% increase over the year before. In fact, since 1977, only three years have seen less charitable giving than the previous year.
Researchers and historians say that we are in either a Golden Age of Philanthropy - or a Second Gilded Age. This is because a growing percentage of that increased charitable giving reflects the ultra-wealthy who pocket, invest, and - yes - give away more and more each year. At the same time, wages and net worth for the overwhelming number of Americans have stagnated or even declined over the past generation.
This is why, over the past 26 years, the wealthiest 1% of households have gone from one-tenth to two-thirds of American charitable giving. Meanwhile, the percentage of American families that made any charitable deductions at all has steadily fallen, to less than 50%. Fewer and fewer families have the money to give at all.
This morning’s Torah portion, Parashat Shoftim, begins with Moses charging the Israelites to install judges and magistrates at the gates of their cities, who will establish “mishpat tzedek - just judgment” - for the residents therein.1
This command immediately follows the delineation of the cycle of Hebrew pilgrimage festivals with which last week’s portion concludes.
The 19th century Rabbi Chaim of Chernowitz, Ukraine, explains the connection. In order to facilitate the observance of these festivals, the Israelites would need to establish a reliable system of law and order that could ensure the moral safety of the throngs of pilgrims streaming into Jerusalem from across the country. They would act as a sort of morality police, ensuring that lewd conduct was not taking place, and that the celebration did not spill over into debauchery.
The 20th century American Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ginsburg goes a step further. He notes that tzedakah, charitable giving and sharing with those less fortunate, is an integral part of celebrating the festivals. At the same time, tzedakah only properly exists in a context of “mishpat” - of law and order. This makes sense - it would be awkward to laud the generous sharing of a bounty that was likely accumulated through ill-gotten means!
The epigraph atop Mario Puzo’s The Godfather is the paraphrased aphorism, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” Perhaps the American reality of income inequality - in which a small number of people grow wealthier and more influential while everyone else becomes poorer and more reliant - is itself, if not a crime, certainly an unjustice.
Perhaps, then, those massive sums donated to various charities and causes, especially through the medium of foundations, as individually generous as they are, actually reflect a fundamental, systemic problem with our laws themselves - actually reflect a fundamental problem. In Torah terms, it’s tzedakah without mishpat. This works on several levels.
One way of thinking about it is people who become rich by exploiting others. Jeff Bezos may be the obvious example here, but he is only the avatar of a much larger trend of stagnant wages for workers, anti-labor policies, reduced benefits, and stratospheric executive pay. Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr. put it:
“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice that make philanthropy necessary.”
A second way of thinking about it is that big philanthropy, by dint of its influence, is fundamentally antidemocratic. I’m thinking of books like Rob Reich’s Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better:
Though we may laud wealthy individuals who give away their money for society’s benefit, Just Giving shows how such generosity not only isn’t the unassailable good we think it to be but might also undermine democratic values and set back aspirations of justice. Big philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a form of power that is largely unaccountable, often perpetual, and lavishly tax-advantaged. The affluent—and their foundations—reap vast benefits even as they influence policy without accountability…These outcomes are shaped by the policies that define and structure philanthropy.
Nicholas Lemann put it well in The New Yorker last year:
During any gilded age, there’s a dance between politics and capital. Rich people depend on favorable political conditions to build and preserve their wealth. Mega-philanthropists use that wealth to influence government far more than they’d be able to merely by voting on Election Day. They can set up think tanks that promote policies they approve of, and they can enlist public resources for their endeavors.
Only within the context of mishpat, the “just judgment” that ensures dignity and fairness for everyone, can tzedakah truly emerge as something to celebrate.
Translation per Robert Alter. Other translations include “equitable justice” or “righteous justice”
If they redistributed through taxation then no one would have a complaint against wealthy families not giving enough.