By Joel H. Cohen
NEW YORK — Trying to fall asleep one night earlier this year, I didn’t rely on the old-reliable method of counting sheep or picturing glamorous movie stars or mermaids (a whole other story).
Instead, I spent the wakeful moments selecting the worthy charities to which I’d give some of my multi-billion-dollar Powerball winnings. I was in Florida, where Powerball mania outpaced even Early Bird addiction, so it was logical to awake-dream a big payoff.
The next day, though, I realized I had not won the lottery…one reason being I hadn’t bought a ticket.
But I was cheered by the fact that my imaginings had been subconsciously inspired by, and connected to, an age-old Jewish virtue: tzedakah
It was reminiscent of an event more than 70 years earlier. In 1942, the week before my Bar Mitzvah, two great uncles from Detroit came to Staten Island, New York, probably for the event. After visiting my father, their nephew, at his lumber yard in the Tompkinsville section of the Island, they decided they’d visit my maternal grandparents, who had a dry goods store just a block or two from the lumber yard.
My grandparents and great uncles hadn’t seen each other since my parents’ wedding a good15 years earlier. So my grandfather didn’t immediately recognize the yarmulke-wearing great uncles, brothers to each other, the white-bearded one, picture George Bernard Shaw, known in the family as the frummeh (the observant one) and the other, the gutteh (the good one) — which is yet another story.
It was a time when strangers from Brooklyn or Manhattan would call on Jewish storekeepers n various parts of the City for contributions to yeshivas (religious schools) or needy families, and these collectors are what my grandfather immediately took my great uncles to be. So he automatically went to his cash drawer, took out some money and gave it to the visitors. The uncles laughed, identified themselves, and complimented my grandfather on his charitable nature.(To this day, I don’t know whether they ever returned the money.) They all enjoyed a great, jolly reunion.
It’s particularly heartwarming to realize that tzedakah is in our Jewish genes.
But the worthy charities of today are still waiting. So next time, I’ll buy a ticket.
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Cohen is a freelance writer based in New York. Comments intended for publication in the space below MUST be accompanied by the letter writer’s first and last name and by his/ her city and state of residence (city and country for those outside the United States.)