The End of Cash and the Jewish Ethics of Giving

A few weeks ago, I arrived at morning services at my synagogue and, out of habit, reached into my jacket pocket for a dollar to drop in the pushke (charity box) on my way out. I didn't have my wallet on me, which is typical these days. I rarely carry cash anymore, relying mostly on Apple Pay.

I'm not alone. Walk into almost any synagogue today and you'll notice the ritual of dropping a bill into the charity box is quietly fading. Not because people are less generous, but because cash itself is disappearing from daily life. We pay for coffee with our phones. We split dinner with an app. We tip with a QR code. It was only a matter of time before that shift reached tzedakah (charitable giving).

So, what do we lose, and what do we gain? There's something irreplaceable about the physical act of giving. I taught religious school as a college student and I enjoyed watching as my elementary school age students would drop a few quarters into the light blue Jewish National Fund for Israel tzedakah box with a kind of pride you just don't get from clicking a donate button. That moment mattered. It was tactile, it was visible, and it left an impression that stayed with them. The pushke was never just about the money. It was about the gesture.

I think about that ritual when I consider how dramatically charitable giving has changed in a short time. After weekday morning minyan, it used to be common for people to drop a dollar or two on the way out the door. A quiet moment, almost reflexive, that connected prayer with responsibility. Today, that same person might make a donation from their phone later in the day, assuming they remember. Or they might give through a year-end online campaign, or respond to a link in a synagogue email newsletter or on the congregation’s website. The giving still happens. The moment does not.

But I've also seen what digital giving can do. I know families who've set up online tribute pages after losing a loved one, and within hours, donations are pouring in from people spread across the country. Friends, relatives, former colleagues, all able to honor someone's memory instantly from wherever they are. A check in the mail takes days, and there’s a process to writing it out and then addressing the envelope, putting a postage stamp on it, and dropping it in the mailbox. A digital contribution takes seconds. That kind of reach and immediacy didn't exist a generation ago, and it has genuinely expanded the circle of who gives and when.

Jewish tradition is clear that the method of giving isn't the point. Maimonides outlined eight levels of tzedakah in his Mishneh Torah, and not one of them specifies the delivery mechanism. The highest level, he taught, is helping someone become self-sufficient. The lowest is giving reluctantly. Of course, nowhere in that hierarchy does it matter whether the money arrived in coins, a check or a payment app. What matters is the act itself and the intention behind it. The Torah's obligation to care for those in need doesn't come with a footnote about payment methods.

Abraham Foxman's Legacy Fighting Hate

 Yesterday, we lost a giant in the Jewish world with the passing of Abraham Foxman. For decades, Abe Foxman stood on the front lines fighting antisemitism and defending the Jewish people with strength, dignity, and moral clarity. He did not simply speak about hate, but confronted it directly, tirelessly, and without fear.

His passing feels especially personal because today I received an email from a bar mitzvah parent who shared the painful reality her son faced at school: “Last Friday at school another student shouted ‘Jew’ and ‘gas chamber’ at my son at recess. Later in the day the student blocked his locker and there was an actual physical confrontation.”

Those words should stop every one of us in our tracks.

Foxman understood that antisemitism was never just history. It was present, dangerous, and always waiting to resurface if good people stayed silent. He spent his life making sure Jewish children could grow up proudly and safely as Jews.

Reading the Comments: A Jewish Response to Online Hate

In a press conference following the terror incident at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said, “Antisemitism and antisemitic behavior has become normalized. It’s been allowed, and that’s unacceptable… We have to stand up and say: ‘No, this is unacceptable.’” He was then asked how to deal with the hatred and virulent antisemitism in online comment sections, to which he quickly responded, “Don’t read comments… social media is terrible when you have people empowered to say things about situations they know nothing about.”

Not long ago, if you wanted to engage with a news story, you might discuss it over coffee, at the Shabbat dinner table, or after services at the synagogue. Today, the conversation often unfolds in the comments section following an online article, a social media post, or a YouTube video, and that is not always a healthy place to be.

Spend a few minutes scrolling through comments and it becomes clear how much hostility exists just beneath the surface. For Jews, that hostility often takes a very familiar form. Antisemitic and anti-Israel comments appear with alarming frequency, often posted by anonymous users hiding behind fake names and profile pictures.

Recently, I came across a comment on a New York Magazine article about the attack at Temple Israel. One commenter wrote that Jews were safer before the creation of the State of Israel. It was a striking statement, not only because it was offensive, but because it was so historically detached from reality. The Holocaust took place before 1948, and Jewish persecution spans thousands of years across continents and cultures. Yet there it was, presented as fact.

Moments like this raise an important question: How should we respond? Should we stop reading the comments altogether, or should we engage and try to correct misinformation? Should we report hateful content, even when it feels like nothing will come of it? There is no single answer, although Jewish tradition offers a helpful framework for thinking about these questions.

JewPT - a Look at the Future of Jewish Learning

Artificial intelligence keeps asking Judaism an old question in a new way: Who gets to answer?

Last year, I wrote about whether AI might someday replace rabbis. My conclusion was fairly clear. No matter how sophisticated these tools become, they lack the depth, context and human relationship that sit at the heart of Jewish life. But as AI continues to evolve, a more interesting question has emerged. If these tools are not replacements, what are they becoming instead?

One possible answer is JewPT, a new free AI assistant designed specifically for Jewish textual learning that was created by Jonathan Gugenheim, who lives and works in London in the FinTech industry. JewPT bills itself not as an “AI rabbi” but as a study partner (chevruta in Hebrew) for exploring Torah, Talmud and Jewish wisdom. The distinction is not just semantic. It sits at the center of an increasingly urgent conversation about authority, transparency and ethics in Jewish-facing technology.

The idea for JewPT did not come from a think tank or a synagogue boardroom. It began at home. Jonathan told me the project started when his girlfriend began her conversion journey.

Like many people entering Jewish life, she had questions. Lots of them. Each answer led to three more, in classic Jewish fashion. Some were simple. Others felt too basic or too vulnerable to bring directly to a rabbi. He realized there was no easy place for those questions to land.