I was in yeshiva when I first came across a Talmudic passage that would become a favorite of mine: “A person is recognized by three things — by his pocket, by his cup, and by his anger” (Eruvin 65b). The phrase works better in the original — kiso, koso, ka’aso — and it measures behavior and discloses interior states.
We all have personas that we want to believe represent our authentic selves. But, the Talmud tells us, the truth is revealed when money is involved, when we are drinking, and when we are angry. Each year on Purim the veracity of the Talmud was reinforced during those yeshiva days. For this issue, devoted to the theme of money, we begin where the rabbis did — with the pocket.
Foundation professionals think about money a lot. Money is a tool that we can use to try to make change in the Jewish world, to deepen Jewish education, to build a more secure Israel. Money is practical and metaphysical at once. It moves through our days as a utility: tuition, rent, groceries, synagogue dues. It also moves through our stories: the bequests that sustain institutions, the modest gifts that keep a family afloat, the silent calculations that determine who gets invited and who does not.
Jewish tradition has long taught us to read character in monetary choices: what we withhold, what we give quietly, and what we spend to declare identity or secure legacy. These are not merely transactions. They are statements about who we are and what we owe — both to one another and to the memory of those who built the communal scaffolding we inherited. They are also a signal to the next generation of the type of world we are trying to secure for them.
This double nature, instrument and mirror, makes money a uniquely fraught subject. Jewish law and literature are full of paradoxes: the valuation of honest livelihood and the insistence that wealth be deployed for the public good; the dignity of private property and the insistence on tzedakah as a moral imperative. Judaism stresses your autonomy while making claims on at least part of your wealth. Philanthropy built modern Jewish life — schools, hospitals, communal organizations — and yet we must ask whether the forms of giving remain fit for our present needs. Who decides priorities? How transparent must power be?
These questions are more complicated today than they were in the past. Growing up, we always seemed to be engaged in raising money for Israel: buying enough stamps from JNF to eventually add up to a tree; going house to house getting sponsors for each mile we walked to support Israel; receiving Israel bonds in lieu of bar mitzvah gifts. (I know they were gifts as well, but it was hard to convince 13-year-old me that they were as good as that CB radio I wanted.) Now our institutions might receive grants from the Israeli or U.S. government. That doesn’t feel quite the same as philanthropy, and each transaction has implicit or sometimes explicit strings attached.
The Talmud’s full warning is salutary: Character shows in not only money but intoxication and anger as well. We live in an era of new intoxicants — digital attention, political fervor, the spectacle of wealth — and quick, public anger. Still, money remains the elemental test. It asks of us patience, proportionality, courage, and imagination. It summons our best traditions of mutual responsibility: What we have is not only for ensuring our own comfort but also for enabling others to flourish.
As you read this issue, I hope you will attend not only to policy and practice but to the quieter, ethical rhythms: the small, daily choices that reveal what we truly value. If the pocket shows the person, then perhaps the pocket can also teach the community — by whom we support, how we sustain, and what we bequeath — to become truer to its highest ideals.
