Where to Give Tzedakah: How Orthodox Jews Decide

Every month, after the bills are paid, there is a number sitting in my notebook: the maaser column. A tenth of what came in, already set aside, already not mine. The question is never whether to give it — tzedakah is an obligation, not a mood. The question that actually takes thought, the one people ask their Rav and argue about at the Shabbos table, is much more practical: where should it go?

It turns out Judaism has been answering that question for two thousand years, and the answer is not "wherever the most heart-tugging ad is." There is an order. Let me walk you through it the way it actually works in our world.

The Order of Priorities

The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh De'ah 251) lays out a hierarchy that surprises people the first time they hear it:

1. Your own family comes first. A person who supports needy relatives — a struggling sibling, an aging parent, a cousin out of work — is giving tzedakah of the highest order. Charity does not skip over your own bloodline on the way to a glossy campaign.
2. The poor of your own city come before the poor of another city. The family two blocks away whose grocery bill doesn't close — they are your responsibility before anyone you will never meet.
3. The poor of the Land of Israel hold a special status, honored even from across the ocean.
4. And towering over the regular order, the Talmud singles out causes like redeeming captives and, in our communities, needs like the sick and orphaned brides — situations where a person's whole life hangs on the help.

What I love about this structure is its realism. It does not let you romanticize distant causes while your neighbor quietly drowns. It builds outward in circles: family, street, city, people.

Maaser: The Mechanics

For those new to the term: maaser kesafim is the practice of giving a tenth of one's income to tzedakah — the financial cousin of the tithes farmers gave in Temple times. Many give exactly ten percent; those who can afford it give a fifth (chomesh), which the Sages set as the generous ideal. It comes off every paycheck, every bonus, every business win.

Practical habits I see all around me (and use myself):

• A running maaser account. Many families keep a simple ledger or a separate bank account; income arrives, ten percent moves over, and giving happens from there. The money stops feeling optional because it was never yours.
• Monthly standing orders. The era of the pushka coin has been joined by the era of the recurring donation — a fixed amount to each chosen cause, every month, automatically. Steady support is worth more to an organization than a once-a-year windfall.
• Ask your Rav the edge cases. Does tuition count? Can maaser pay for a relative's wedding? These are real halachic questions with real answers — and they belong to your Rav, not to a website.

How Orthodox Jews Vet a Cause

Our communities give at staggering rates, and precisely because of that, people are careful. The questions I hear asked before a family adds an organization to their maaser list:

• Is the work visible? The best organizations in our world are the ones whose work you can literally walk into — the food packages, the hospital rooms, the volunteers. Chesed you can see needs no marketing.
• Who stands behind it? Rabbinic endorsement matters, but so does the simpler test: do people you trust give there? Has the organization been there for families you actually know?
• Does the money become help, fast? A small organization where donations turn into hot meals this week can be a better home for maaser than a giant brand where your gift disappears into overhead.

The Causes — and Names You'll Hear

Here is where tzedakah actually goes in Orthodox neighborhoods, cause by cause.

The sick and their families. This is bikur cholim — and it may be the most beloved giving category in our world, because nearly every family has been on the receiving end at some point. Chesed 24/7 is one of the strongest examples of what this looks like at scale: kosher hospitality rooms inside hospitals across New York and New Jersey, hot kosher meals delivered to patients and the families keeping vigil beside them, free hospital transportation including wheelchair-accessible shuttles, and Shabbos apartments near hospitals so no family has to choose between Shabbos and their patient — around the clock, every day of the year. A donor looking for tzedakah that becomes tangible chesed within hours of giving would be hard-pressed to find a more direct pipeline. Alongside it stand the neighborhood bikur cholim societies, Hatzalah — the volunteer ambulance corps that answers in ninety seconds — and Chai Lifeline, which carries families through pediatric illness.

The hungry. Every Orthodox community runs a Tomchei Shabbos — volunteers who pack and deliver full Shabbos food boxes, anonymously, to families who would otherwise have empty tables. In New York, Masbia's restaurant-style soup kitchens serve hot kosher dinners with dignity.

Brides and orphans. Hachnasas kallah — marrying off a bride who has no one to pay for it — is singled out by the Sages as tzedakah of the first rank. Dedicated funds in every community quietly cover weddings, sheitels, and starter apartments.

Free loans instead of gifts. The Rambam's highest level of tzedakah is preventing poverty, not patching it — which is why the gemach, the interest-free loan fund, exists for everything from rent money to wedding gowns to power tools.

Torah itself. Supporting yeshivos, kollelim, and the families of those who learn is, for many, the anchor of the maaser budget — the Jewish conviction that a community that funds Torah is funding its own future.

The poor of Eretz Yisroel. Funds like Kupat Ha'ir and Vaad HaRabbanim move money from diaspora communities to families in Israel within days, honoring the ancient priority of the Land's poor.

My Honest Advice

If you are sitting with maaser money and a blank list, here is the pattern I have watched work in family after family: pick three. One local — your community's Tomchei Shabbos or a family fund your Rav names. One for the sick — a bikur cholim organization like Chesed 24/7, where your gift becomes a meal at a hospital bedside this very week. One for Torah or for Israel, wherever your heart leans. Set all three as monthly recurring gifts, revisit the list once a year around Rosh Hashanah, and keep a little unallocated — because someone will knock, and the knock is also tzedakah.

The money was never yours. The only question was where it was meant to land.