Essays

Leadership, to many, means leading the masses. To the Rebbe, leadership meant empowering individuals, each one, one by one.

Many, many years ago my parents took my brother and me to see the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He gave each of us a crisp dollar bill. Now that I am older, with a family of my own, I feel that there is spiritual value in the dollar. What should I do with it?

"Everyone is obligated to give charity. Even people supported by charity must contribute from what they receive." A law that seems radical on the one hand, and absurd on the other...

Jewish wisdom sees the saving of physical life and the giving of spiritual life as two sides of the same coin of charity. To some we give dollars, to others we give sense.

How MONEY can make you truly happy

There are, of course, other ways to give charity. What's so special about the pushkah? Several things: more action, transformed space, elevated time...

That question probably crossed the minds of millions of Americans as they scrambled to meet the tax-filing deadline last week...

Millionaire Karl Rabeder decided to give it all away to charity, down to the last penny, or Euro. Would our world be healed if more people did the same? Hardly.

How do we reconcile the importance of publicizing good deeds with the Jewish value of modesty?

Is it indeed inappropriate to scale back on charitable disbursements when times are tough, when we are curtailing our spending in so many other lifestyle areas?

Giving charity is really not a luxury; it is a necessity for both the recipient and the donor. If we want to survive this recession, we need to survive it together...

Open your wallet. Take out a single dollar bill. Place it on the table in front of you. Take a long, contemplative look at it. In many ways, this is the most spiritual thing you own

They asked the Baal Shem Tov: "The Talmud tells us that for every thing G-d forbade, He provided us something permissible. What did He permit that corresponds to the sin of heresy?" Replied the Besht : "Acts of kindness"

It's not how much, but how often.