“April 15th: Tax Day”

   Well, today is the day we’ve all longed for…our income taxes are due! Oops, no they’re not. We’ve got til May 17th to pay. Because of the pandemic our deadline last year was July 15th. And some of you might recall that until 1954 the deadline was March 15th. But wait! from 1913 when the income tax was legislated, until 1918 one’s taxes were due on March 1st!! Holy mackerel! all these dates! But the bottom line is that we’ve got to pay our taxes.

   When we ran into a strange or difficult Jewish person, my predecessor in Wilmington used to say, “You pay your taxes, you’re entitled to your share of nuts.” And when someone complains about their high taxes, he would say, “A little more tzedakah (charitable donations) on your part and perhaps your taxes wouldn’t be as high as they are!” 

   Now the legislation regarding charitable donations has changed over the years but for our people the legislation and the inherent value of tzedakah has not. Better I should say, the “obligation,” the mitzvah, has not. The trouble is we so often forget that there is a difference between “charity” and tzedakah. The former implies that you have a higher status than the one you help, noblesse oblige, the obligation of those of high birth or powerful social position. Tzedakah, on the other hand, is everyone’s obligation for the root of the word translates best as “justice.” The poorest person has to fulfill the mitzvah even if it’s counted not in money but in time.

You cannot say tzedakah is the Jewish “tax,” for that would mean it is imposed upon us. Oh sure, the concept goes back to the Torah, and the Prophets emphasized our requirement to help the widow, orphan and poor, but what kind of an “imposition” is it when we’re not Divinely “audited”? Maybe in our holyday tradition of being judged by God do we find auditing…this book/ledger or that book/ledger…but the mitzvah isn’t necessarily “how much” as it is “as long as it’s done.” We judge ourselves; we audit ourselves, in this moral and ethical obligation. We have not specified “Tax Day.” Tzedakah never has a due date per se; every day is the day we must give of ourselves, one way or the other.