Home › Blog › The Spiritual Audit: Elul and the Practice of Purposeful Giving
We live in a world that asks us to account for almost everything: calendars, soccer practices, even bathroom breaks between meetings. And yet, most of us have never been asked to account for our philanthropic giving. Not the dollar amount, of course, but the why behind it. Whether the causes we supported last year still reflect who we are today. Whether our philanthropy has drifted, quietly, from the values that first set it in motion.
Jewish tradition has a word for this kind of reckoning, and it arrives right on schedule every year. The month of Elul, which precedes Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is traditionally devoted to cheshbon hanefesh: an accounting of the soul. The medieval Jewish philosopher Bachya ibn Pakuda, who gave the practice its fullest articulation in his eleventh-century work Chovot HaLevavot (Duties of the Heart), described it as the discipline of examining one’s inner life with the same rigor a merchant brings to a ledger. Not once a year out of obligation, but as a recurring practice of honest self-assessment.
We think there is something instructive in that metaphor for how we think about giving.
A cheshbon hanefesh is not a punishment designed to produce guilt as some Jewish lore would have us believe; rather, it is designed to produce clarity.
Many of the donors we work with at the Jewish Community Foundation of The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington built their giving practices years, sometimes decades, ago, in response to a moment, a relationship, or a cause that mattered urgently at the time. However, causes and people evolve. Families grow. Communities change. And without ever quite deciding to, many of us end up giving out of habit rather than values-alignment, supporting the same handful of organizations year after year because that is simply what we have always done.
One thing we hear from donors and families at the Foundation is a sense of having drifted from a giving relationship that once mattered deeply to them. The organization they used to support enthusiastically. The collaborative giving fund they joined with real excitement and then, somehow, never engaged with again. The cause that animated them five years ago, now quietly absent from their giving altogether.
Elul offers a structured invitation to ask a different question. Not, “am I giving enough,” but:
Am I giving like myself?
In the spirit of cheshbon hanefesh, we offer three questions to sit with over the next month, the way our tradition intends reflection:
1. Where did my giving this year align with what I actually care about? Look back over the past twelve months of grants, gifts, and commitments. Which ones, in hindsight, felt the most aligned to your convictions? What did they have in common? Often the answer reveals something about values you hold more strongly than you’ve tangibly articulated.
2. Where did it drift? This is the harder question. Is there a gift you made this year that, looking back, you’re not sure why you made? A commitment that continued more out of inertia than conviction? An organization you’ve drifted from, not out of disinterest, but simply because life moved faster than your attention could keep up? Naming the drift is not an indictment, but the beginning of teshuvah: the return to alignment that the entire High Holiday season is built around.
3. What will I commit to in 5787? After thinking through what went well and what drifted, think of one thing you’ll do differently in your philanthropic giving this year. We’re not suggesting a complete overhaul or a refined five-year strategic plan, just one committed action. Perhaps it’s redirecting a portion of your giving toward a cause that’s been on your mind but not yet on your calendar. Maybe it’s reconnecting with a collaborative fund you miss learning from and giving alongside. Or maybe you don’t know what’s missing, and that’s okay. Our team is here to listen and support your philanthropic evolution, whether it’s with us or elsewhere.
Jewish tradition has never treated tzedakah as a single act to be checked off a list. It’s closer to a lifestyle: practiced, refined, and revisited, much like prayer or study. Maimonides’ famous “Ladder of Giving” was not a one-time ranking, but a framework meant to be returned to again and again, as a person’s capacity and clarity grew.
The same is true of cheshbon hanefesh itself. Its purpose is never to arrive at a final, settled account, but to build the muscle of honest reflection so that it becomes part of how a person lives. It should be a recurring habit of checking whether the life one is living, and the giving woven into it, actually matches the person one intends to be.
This Elul, we invite you to bring that same discipline to your philanthropy. It is the perfect time of year for the kind of honest, compassionate accounting that Jewish tradition has always understood to be the necessary prelude to genuine change.
At the Foundation, cheshbon hanefesh is precisely the kind of conversation our team is here for. Our job is to ensure that your philanthropic practice still reflects the person and the family you are today and hope to be tomorrow.
As the shofar sounds each morning of Elul, calling us toward a new accounting, we wish you a season of honest reflection, and a New Year built on what you uncover.
The Jewish Community Foundation