Most of us don’t think of ourselves as philanthropists.
We might give to an appeal, sponsor someone doing a marathon, support a synagogue, send money when there is a crisis, or quietly help a cause that matters to us. We probably don’t make a great song and dance about it. We just give.
And that, in many ways, is tzedakah. It is one of those Jewish ideas that is woven so deeply into communal life that we sometimes forget how remarkable it is. We grow up understanding that if someone needs help, we should help. If a community organisation matters, we should support it. If we are fortunate enough to have something to give, then giving is simply part of the deal. So I sometimes wonder why we treat legacy giving as though it belongs in a completely different category.
Why should tzedakah stop when we do? For me, leaving a gift to charity in a will is not really about death at all. It is about what continues afterwards.
It is saying: this mattered to me. This organisation helped people. This school mattered. This care home mattered. This charity mattered. This community mattered. And I would like some part of it to continue because I was here. There is something wonderfully positive about that.
We are all beneficiaries of people who thought beyond their own lifetimes. Look around our Jewish community and almost everything we value exists because somebody, somewhere, decided to build something that would outlast them. Schools. Synagogues. Care homes. Welfare organisations. Youth movements. Charities. Community centres.
People gave their money, their time, their energy and their imagination. Most of us do not know their names. But we live with the consequences of their generosity every day. That is legacy. And it does not have to mean leaving millions of pounds or having your name on the side of a building. That is another misconception I would love us to lose. A legacy can be modest. It might be one per cent of an estate. It might be a fixed amount. It might simply be whatever somebody feels comfortable leaving once their family has been taken care of.
But imagine the collective effect if thousands more people did it.
One small gift might help an older person feel less alone. Another could help a child with additional needs. Another could support somebody living with cancer. Another might provide meals, counselling, education or practical help to a family having a terrible year. None of those gifts needs to be enormous to matter enormously to the person receiving the help.
There is a Jewish story I have always liked. A man sees an elderly person planting a carob tree and asks why he is bothering, knowing that it will take many years before the tree bears fruit. The answer is: other people planted for me, so I plant for those who come after me. That feels like a pretty good description of legacy giving. We have all sat under somebody else’s tree. The question is whether we plant one of our own.
Of course, families come first. Nobody involved in legacy giving would suggest otherwise.
But when we sit down to make a will, we are already asking ourselves some very personal questions. Who do I love? Who do I want to protect? What matters to me? Perhaps there is room for one more: What do I want to continue?
I would love us to become much more comfortable talking about this. Not in hushed voices. Not only when people are elderly. And certainly not as a gloomy conversation about what happens when we are gone. Quite the opposite. It is a conversation about the future. We cannot know exactly what the Jewish community will need in 20, 30 or 50 years. But we do know that people will still need care. Children will still need education. Families will still sometimes struggle. People will still become ill, lonely or vulnerable.
And we will still need strong Jewish organisations there to support them. Previous generations made sure those organisations were there for us. Perhaps one of the nicest things we can do is return the favour.
Tzedakah does not have to stop with us. It can keep going long after us. And that, surely, is a legacy worth leaving.
Anthony Broza is chair of Jewish Legacy Giving. To find out more about supporting the charities you care about, go to jewishlegacy.org.uk or call 0203 375 6248