GIVE THE NEEDY “A LITTLE” BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT

I doubt that there is any church, synagogue, masjid, or ashram, large or small, in Greater Greenville that does not have a steady flow of genuinely or allegedly needy people knocking at its doors. They can be persistent, intrepid, even annoying. And, they do pose a dilemma for even the most gracious, charitable House of God.

In large measure, the dilemma stems from our wariness of the “allegedly needy.” This cadre includes able-bodied folks who refuse to make any effort toward helping themselves. But, even they are overshadowed by likely a majority of the needy at our congregations’ doors who concoct any kind of phantasmagoric hard-luck story simply to feed their addiction to drugs, alcohol and/or tobacco.

Beleaguered to the point of cynicism, our congregations have devised a variety of coping strategies. From all reports, the vast majority of congregations in Greater Greenville have no mechanism whatsoever for direct charitable subventions. They opt instead to contribute directly to United Ministries, Catholic Charities, Miracle Hills, et al, all of them worthy social service entities well equipped for assessing serving the needy.

Some of us, including my own congregation, have taken a different route: We give any putatively needy person at our door a once-a-week $10 for-food-only Bi-Lo voucher or let him/her fill a bag from our food basket. We consider this a baseline sort of benefit of the doubt that a House of God should extend to the needy, even though it still leaves us vulnerable to some possibility of rip-off. We also give subventions from my pitifully puny charity fund for rent or utilities, but only when the recipient presents a written referral, followed up by a confirming phone call, from a bona fide social service agency, and then only with the check made out directly to the agency, landlord, or utility company.

But, there is still a rub: The referral calls to us from social service agencies have become incessant, as many as 8-10 a week. This is because only a scant handful of local congregations have any process whatsoever for directly helping the needy, even under the strictly proscribed guidelines that we have established. Caseworkers know that unless they call Beth Israel or five or six other congregations, they are out of luck. Occasionally, we even receive referrals from other congregations, dare I say larger and more affluent than our own, who tell the needy, “We have no way of helping you, but Beth Israel does.”

And, how much are we able to help? Please do not invoke the xenophobic myth that “all Jews are rich.” Nor do we have any outside sources of funding. My “Rabbi’s Fund” is sustained exclusively by freewill contributions of benevolent congregants and is stretched thin by other needs – scholarships, special projects, and assistance to down-and-out members of our own congregation – and usually has the astounding balance of $137.

If I wanted accolades for the generosity of Beth Israel, I would not have written this column. This is not about accolades, but about a word of encouragement, even chiding, for the vast majority of congregations in Greater Greenville: One day soon, please God, we will stop lamenting the abuse of our charitableness at the hands of druggies and scam artists, and stop blubbering about how we must invest all our energies in addressing “the roots of poverty,” and stop emptily debating the merits of faith-based initiatives versus creating a welfare state. On that day, as today, there will still, always, be a core of genuinely needy people who will have no heat, no roof over their heads, no food to feed their babies.

The social service agencies will do whatever they can, and then they will turn to our Houses of God for help. We can turn them away, saying that we have no mechanisms for direct charitable outreach, or tell them “we gave at the office,” or let our cynicism dictate our charitable policies. I say that we are already awash in enough cynicism “out there.” A House of God may be the only outpost left where a little idealism must still prevail, at least enough idealism to give the needy “a little” benefit of the doubt.