THE PAINLESS, EVERYDAY-NESS OF GIVING CHARITY

I would call this a personal mission, but that would be far too grandiose. Nor is the idea original, but a lingering childhood memory, still alive in a few scattered places. Perhaps my only contribution would be to the idea’s broader revival.

I remember that as a kid, one could not do business in a bakery or butcher shop along our neighborhood’s main shopping drag, Devon Avenue, without seeing a charity box next to the cash register. It was designated to a particular cause – leukemia, heart disease, a parochial school, an orphanage – and the idea was to drop some of the change from your transaction into what we called the pushke, a corruption of the Polish word for “box.”

Oh, you were rarely badgered. You could get away without feeding the pushke, and only occasionally would the storekeeper look at you cockeyed if you did not. But, the opportunity was there – tangible, immediate, unavoidable – a reminder that charity is, or at least should be, an everyday exercise. And, the neatest part about it was that you could do a good deed that was relatively painless.

You still see a pushke here and there. It is most usually at a convenient store along the interstate, and most usually collecting for a local person who needs an operation or expensive medical treatment. Some supermarkets and pharmacies do it around Christmastime. When you see that pushke, do you take a moment to drop some change into it?

We here in Greenville see ourselves as a most charitable community. I simply recommend that we broaden the opportunity for our citizens to feed the pushke wherever we do cash business and expand the scope to include worthy ongoing causes – healthcare, homelessness, education, church missions, the elderly – whatever the proprietor sees as his/her signature cause.

Every time that I get back a handful of change from a shopping venture, I ask the storekeeper to put a charity box labeled for a favorite cause near the cash register, right next to the “take a penny, leave a penny” ashtray. Chain it to the counter if you must, to prevent it being snatched and diverted to the wrong “charity.” After a month or two, count it up and give it to your chosen charity. Painless. Honorable. Helpful. Gracious.

To date, I have convinced only my cleaners, a devout Christian couple from Korea, to put in a pushke for their church’s missions. No, the results as yet have not been stunning, but they have started.

My appeal to the storekeepers of the Upstate, particularly those who run small businesses, is to simply do it. No frills. No feasibility studies. No contingency plans. No fanfare. Just pick a favorite cause and do it.

My appeal to the shoppers of the Upstate is to drop in a few coins each time you get back a fistful of change and know that beside your regular avenues of major contributions – church, United Way, whatever – you are doing a little bit of transcendent good each day painlessly. And, you will also know that the sum total of your contributions and that of others will have ultimate results that will be absolutely stunning. You could do even more by joining the “mission” and encouraging storekeepers to make the opportunity available to their patrons. The goodness will go well beyond the sheer dollars raised, because a community’s basic wellbeing is reflected most in its routine, random acts of benevolence.

While we are on the subject of the pushke, how many of you have a pushke at home? What a wonderful place to put your small change at the end of the day. What a wonderful lesson for the kids, that the family’s commitment to charity has an everyday-ness about it. What a wonderful sense that real charity means not giving ‘til it hurts, but ‘til it feels good.

We Jews customarily feed our pushkes just as week ends and the Sabbath candles are lit. Thus, the last act of the workaday week and the first act of the holy Sabbath is an act of giving, not taking. Just recently, looking through a Christian magazine in the doctor’s waiting room, I read an appeal for Christians to do the same – to end the week and start the Sabbath with everyone putting a few pennies in the charity box, regardless of the more substantial contribution we put in the plate on Sunday morning.

Huge magnanimous gifts are always in order, and without them, our hospitals, schools and houses of worship would simply not get built. If you can do that, then God bless you. But, whether you can or you cannot, let it not substitute for the unobtrusive, painless, anyone-can-do-it, act of putting a few pennies in the pushke wherever you shop and wherever you call your home.