The benefits of membership are in the giving

Kirk Wisemayer, Annual Community Campaign Director

Some lessons never fade, remaining with us forever. That which has remained most vivid for me is on the obligations of membership in the Jewish people.

There are mitzvot, whose performance is designed to make us better people as individual Jews, while others are designed to enhance our relationships with one another, as well as with G-d. Yet, there are only two mitzvot, aside from circumcision, we are required to perform to be considered members of the Jewish people: Attending or participating in a Passover (Pesach) Seder, and giving tzedakah, or charity, through a communal appeal.

Pesach has little, if anything, to do with our personal observance or faith, and everything to do with our collective identity as a people. Peoplehood comes first, both in the reliving of our flight from slavery and in the retelling of our flight to freedom. This was our redemption, and when we became a people. It is why our presence at a Seder is so important; why it is the only one of our holidays at which each Jew present must drink from the Kiddush wine, and each successive cup. Pesach, and the Seder specifically, is our annual renewal as members of the Jewish people.

It is no coincidence that Pesach occurs in the month of Nisan, the first in the Jewish calendar. With Pesach begins the cycle of our year. It is the Independence Day or New Year of the Jewish people, whereas Rosh Hashanah (New Year), which occurs in the seventh month (Tishri), is the birthday of the world, or the New Year of creation.

The holiday that follows Pesach is Shavuot, the celebration of the 10 commandments, the revelation at Sinai. As every Jew is believed to have been at Sinai, so, too, it is believed that every Jew participated, as a nation, in the very first communal fundraising campaign. It is why, like the retelling of the Exodus at the Seder table, each generation since, wherever they have lived in the world, has given to an annual campaign in their local Jewish community.

Yes, there are many forms of tzedakah, but most are largely forms of individual tzedakah. Communal giving differs because, like the Seder, it is a renewal or an act of membership. It is how we demonstrate peoplehood.

Sinai was the birth of Jewish philanthropy and, because we can no longer all be present together at Sinai, for generations since, we give as a people in our local community to help Jews the world over. When we give to a communal appeal, or an annual campaign, our symbolic Sinai, we are saying that we act together, each of us, to ensure the welfare of our people, that of each and every Jew. We relive Sinai.

While there is much more to Judaism and to being a Jew than peoplehood, and while Sinai might have been the defining moment that shaped (and shapes) the content and values of our identity as a people, the fact that Pesach is our very first holiday is enormously significant. Why? Because it means our sense of peoplehood, our collective identity, depends upon the extent to which we each participate in Jewish life and community, as well as the extent to which we allow our Jewish values and practices, individually, to shape us a people.

We are strongest when we act together, which is why we left Egypt as a people, and why our greatest accomplishments since are, and always will be, those we make possible together and by giving as a community.

As you sit at your Seder table, or that of someone else, remember that you are doing much more than the telling of history. You are reliving it. You are renewing your membership in Jewish peoplehood, and you are doing so together with millions of Jews all over the world, affirming you are a member of a global community of Jews.

This Passover and beyond, may we each renew our membership in the Jewish people. May we extend the reach of good in the world, through our deeds and our giving. May the good that begins here in our community reverberate throughout the Jewish world, and may it be seen and felt by those, our brethren in and who have fled Ukraine particularly, whose Pesach will not be as blessed or as peaceful as our own.

From all of us at Jewish Federation of Greater Naples, those on the board and staff, to each and all of you, and to Klal Yisrael, Jews everywhere, a Happy Passover, a Zissen Pesach, a chag Pesach sameach.

For more information on how you can be ‘Here for Good’ in Greater Naples and around the world, through your support of the Annual Community Campaign, please contact me at kwisemayer@ jewishnaples.org or 239-263-4205.