Most people reading this post are probably digging back into what feels like a whole new work year. Fresh with the energy of a well-deserved vacation, or at least a long weekend, and ready to take on that inbox full of the new ideas and projects that make up this time of renewal between Labor day and Thanksgiving. This period is especially poignant this year with our presidential election.

From this end of the user experience spectrum, this is a time to rededicate to learning and sharing. Putting the last year away and taking what was learned to our Emerge clients, the people that interact with those brands, and you, reading this blog.

Making this transition during the fall is a tradition around these parts, it has a structure built around thousands of years of learning and transitioning in the Jewish Culture. User Experience Designer Whitney Hess deserves all the credit for publishing this excellent perspective on the practices of Mitzvot (good deeds) and Tzedakah (justice, giving).

For me, it sparked the process of reframing what I can do personally and professionally to make things better for everyone. While I’m not going to share her original post here, I will post my response for you, and look forward to your comments:

Whitney, as usual your writing got me thinking in a different way about something I already hold high in every day life.

You got me to go back and learn more about Tzedakah especially and who Maimonides was, how he came up with the Mishna Torah, and all that Jazz — which led to even more insights. And then reading your post again with comments led to more ideas still. So thank you! I think the blog post was pretty high up on the Tzedakah depth chart!

I do what I do in terms of strategy and user experience, and work in general always attempting to reach the top level of Tzedakah. While I may not get there, I always want to help people learn something new, have something of utility; and at best, provide work for talented, hard-working professionals. That is the ultimate reward.

If I can spend my time exchanging ideas so that someone can learn a new way to support themselves or their family: that is the most gratifying time spent. Giving to charity is of course great, but to be honest, dropping the coins in the Tzedakah box doesn’t even compare to presenting ideas on some aspect of user experience to people and watch their faces light-up with the delight of learning something new, or finding a new approach to something old. To me, a day in the office like that is worth more than a high-holiday pray-a-thon.

Wait a second. Finding out something new and sharing it with others, who can share that information with others…. sounds like social media. Today, social networking and the ideas of companies being part of the conversation between people is often termed “disruptive.”

Funny, but this is how Maimonidies was viewed way back (like 800 years ago) when he wrote the notions of Tzedakah. Today, we take these ideas as gospel, as though they so self-evidently represent universal truths. No matter what you’re religion, we can all agree that helping someone help themselves is a great idea. But back then, these ideas were tremendously disruptive. His writing was burned by orthodox congregations in the name of G-d (only to be brought back to europe and vaunted to spur the renaissance later). Now they are revered, and we can’t help but think about them during this annual time of renewal.

This brings me to the point of your post and the comment from Arnie correcting you in terms of the “actual” text from the Mishna Torah. As I was looking back on the guidelines of Tzedakah and the study of these works in the context of Maimonides’ life as a social-networking node in his job as an Egyptian doctor and local spiritual leader on the weekends — it really shows off how unimportant the texts are, and how incredibly important critical thinking, questioning, and interpretation are.

Just like Shakespeare a few hundred years later, is any of Maimonides writing really written by him? Who cares about the correct wording? When I came to your post, I had always thought about Tzedakah as justice, plain and simple. I’m making it a mission to learn as much as I can, and share as much as I can back filtered through my experience because it’s my job as a person. Justice. Period.

This viewpoint was mostly informed by an cartoon poster at hebrew school about Tzedakah that followed the popular commercial Schoolhouse Rock series. At the top was a man shaking another man’s hand in congratulations for his new job.

Over the years, I have heard many different interpretations, including ones like the views on this page, that have added depth, interest, and complexity. On one of the sites I saw while clicking for more information on Tzedakah wrote at the bottom, “This page is designed as a guideline and to help formulate more questions.”

So to end this ramble, I hope the readers of this post, regardless of denomination, will take this as a spark plug to spend the first few weeks of September renewing themselves, asking questions, and finding something new to learn and to share.

Who knows. Maybe in 800 years, someone will discover one of your ideas, and it will make a big difference in the way they live their life.

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