Growing up in a small town in Ohio as the daughter of Holocaust survivors, author Julie Salamon was raised with a philanthropic ideology.
“My father was the town doctor,” the New York resident said, “and he never charged a patient that couldn’t afford it.”
From a young age, Salamon learned that this was the “right way to behave,” she said. But her take on philanthropy took a different approach when an editor at the New York Times, where Salamon works as a critic, asked her a month after the 9/11 attacks to write a book on giving and charity.
“I live about a mile from ground zero, and I was asked to write the book at a time when the whole world was good versus evil,” said the author, who recently made a stop at the Philanthropy Incubator Silicon Valley in Palo Alto, sponsored by the Community Foundation Silicon Valley and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
In 2003, Salamon released “Rambam’s Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give.” Her book looks at philanthropy through the writings of 12th century philosopher Rambam, also known as Maimonides. Rambam believed that the world was out of balance, and that the reason for giving was to attain equilibrium. He dissected the notion of charity into eight steps, which Salamon uses as a how-to on giving.
The steps on the charity ladder are responsibility, anonymity, corruption, boundaries, shame, solicitation, proportion and reluctance.
“Fundamentally, as I went through the whole process, it became more and more clear to me. As I moved down the eight steps, the whole idea was to become a righteous person, and Rambam was trying to find a code of behavior,” Salamon said.
“This is the way for Jews; this is what holds us together, and this essence has not changed.”
Since the book was released, she has been surprised at the response she’s received.
“The book has had an unbelievable afterlife,” she said. “I was not expecting this.”
She has traveled around the country for the past two years, talking about “Rambam’s Ladder.” In promoting her book and discussing different approaches to giving, it has become obvious to Salamon that charity needs to become a greater part of the public dialogue.
“People are saying they are ambivalent to the topic. Even major philanthropists have never thought about some of the questions addressed in the book,” she said.
While she expected a response from Jewish groups, she said that organizations representing museums, nonprofits and businesses have also adopted the book.
“The book asks: What does giving mean to me?” she said, which can be applied both to a family who wants to help the needy and a business that wants to help develop its community.
When Salamon set out to research the book, she wanted to explore modern philanthropy.
“What I found was how complicated giving is. What I discovered was not so much why people give, but how they give,” she said.
During the past 15 years, Salamon added, there has been a steady growth in giving enterprises.
“The truth is that the philanthropic business is huge. In fact, a big complaint is that it has become a huge industry, and today the presumption is that there is corruption in the nonprofit world. But there’s probably a lot less corruption than people think,” she said.
But skepticism about giving to nonprofits is not the only negative reactions to philanthropy, Salamon noticed.
“One of the most interesting things is what a nerve the subject of giving touches in people,” she said. “A lot of people are hostile to the subject. This book is intended not to make people react defensively, but to think about the process.”
Her research was simple: Talk to those who would know best about giving and receiving. She talked to everyone, from the wealthy to the homeless, Jews and non-Jews — and read a lot.
While writing the book, Salamon tried wanted to be careful to avoid sounding “preachy.”
“What I try to do is help them,” she said, “and avoid the feeling that people are being lectured to.”
As she takes on a new writing project, Salamon said she greatly benefited from “Rambam’s Ladder.”
“It heightened my awareness about volunteerism. The whole notion of giving is that we are building a community, and we are not in this party by ourselves.”
“Rambam’s Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give” by Julie Salamon (192 pages, Workman Publishing Company, $18.95).