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.

Bar Mitzvah T-Shirts in Africa

It's no secret that many of those cotton t-shirts we wear here in the First World ultimately get donated and wind up in the Third World. Thousands of t-shirts that get printed each year celebrating the losing team in the Super Bowl, NBA Finals and World Series usually get shipped to Africa. And for decades the customary bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah t-shirts that accumulate in teens' closets have been donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill to be sent to Africa or into impoverished neighborhoods throughout North America. When I lived in New York City, it was not unusual for me to see a homeless man wearing a donated bar mitzvah t-shirt or a Jewish youth group shirt that had been donated before the owner went off to college.

National Public Radio (NPR) did a story the other day on the fate of these donated t-shirts that wind up in Africa. It wasn't the first time such a story had been done. Almost three years ago Mother Jones ran a story titled "When Hooters T-Shirts Go to Africa: Donate an old t-shirt in the US? Someday it might travel to a country like Liberia." And over ten years ago the New York Times published a story that also tracked donated clothes to the Third World in George Packer's article "How Susie Bayer's T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama's Back." The basic premise of these stories is that once you donate an old sweatshirt or t-shirt to the Salvation Army or Goodwill, your old, used clothing takes on a new life somewhere else. We often don't think of who's wearing our old winter coat that we donated, but it does make for an interesting story.