One in five Jews in New York City lives in poverty, according to statistics gathered by the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. With rent hikes, Jewish education expenses and the high cost of kosher food, living a Jewish lifestyle often takes a backseat to paying the bills.
A new curriculum designed by Met Council for bar and bat mitzvah age students aims to increase awareness of this often overlooked issue while teaching children about budgeting income and giving back to their community through tzedakah [charity]. Met Council has recently distributed the curriculum to 20 Jewish institutions in New York City and Long Island, some of which have already begun to incorporate it into their classes.
“Everyone thinks Jewish poverty is an oxymoron,” Stefanie Greenberg, volunteer coordinator at Met Council told The Jewish Week.
Greenberg cited only two previous curricula that have dealt with Jews and poverty, both over 10 years old and only covering the Jewish response to poverty, not the poverty of Jewish people. Met Council’s new Jewish Poverty Curriculum, on the other hand, deals both with Jewish people in poverty and Jewish responses to poverty.
The curriculum, originally an effort to increase volunteerism and educate volunteers before beginning work for Met Council, was created by Allison Fisher and Adena Kaplan, two participants in the AmeriCorps*VISTA (Volunteers in Services to America) program. The curriculum helped provide context for Met Council volunteer projects, including definitions of poverty and discussions on specifically Jewish needs and how they relate to poverty.
“Schools are really interested in mitzvah [commandment] programs that teach about poverty,” said Fisher. “The Jewish Poverty Curriculum provides a comprehensive service learning package.”
The curriculum consists of six lessons, which can be taught as one complete program or in isolation, including a budget game in which students create budgets for families with a range of incomes, a poverty trivia game, discussions of the Jewish relationship to tzedakah and a final lesson to encourage volunteering, with suggestions on Met Council projects to join.
Kaplan brought her previous work with children into the mix. “I worked for many years in a camp setting,” she said. “I understand how people learn, whether it is through text or discussion and hands-on work.”
Kaplan chose the Jewish textual passages for the curriculum, consulting Met Council’s former executive director Rabbi David Cohen; Rambam’s ladder of tzedakah figures prominently into the teachings.
One of the primary goals of the curriculum was accessibility for teachers, Kaplan said. “We want them to use it as a tool to shape their own curriculum. We hope they can take advantage of it and run with it.”
Rabbi Hillel Gold, director of Judaic studies and Hebrew language at the East Midwood Hebrew Day School in Brooklyn, has begun teaching the curriculum to his class of seventh graders, interspersing the lessons with his own classes on Jewish laws and customs.
“There are lots of different levels of economics within the Jewish community,” Rabbi Gold said. “I’m not going to say we’re millionaires here, or that we’re living under an overpass, but the middle needs to know about this. Students might think this happens to someone of a different creed or nationality, but it’s not.”
Rabbi Gold’s students helped organize the Chai Lifeline toy drive distribution center as their group mitzvah project, but despite this previous experience in tzedakah, he said the curriculum has been “eye opening” for them. “It touched their neshama – or soul, he said.
“Working on the budget game, they got a really good understanding of what it takes to make a household work and that it’s not always easy,” he said. “They are realizing what some people can or can’t afford.”
Rabbi Gold hopes that by the end of the year, once he has taught the entire curriculum, his students will incorporate even more tzedakah into their lives.
“The more we reach out and are sensitive to others, it helps bring about tikkun olam [repairing the world],” he said. “It is a mitzvah to be kind to animals. If we treat animals kindly because they are God’s creatures, then what more can we do for other human beings, our own landsman?”
Richard Zemser, director of Jewish life and learning at the Sid Jacobson JCC [Jewish Community Center] in East Hills, Long Island, wants to use the easily adapted curriculum for a very different age group: seniors in his spring Judaism 101 class.
“Adults in our community are not informed on the parameters of Jewish poverty,” Zemser said. Although they already do a lot in terms of tzedakah, poverty itself “is not in the forefront, [it’s at] a much greater scale than they imagine.”
Zemser anticipates using the budget game as well as the facts of poverty trivia game with his group. “Knowing the specifics of poverty is more important here,” he said. “These people know tzedakah.”
Zemser, who is also chair of the Long Island Temple Educators, a Reform temple principals group, plans to bring the curriculum to that group as well, in order to expand the program beyond his own Jewish Community Center.
