Tishrei 5786: A Year of Shefa for All
In this past year of 5785, I have begun to turn toward and make space for a core wound of mine—money. Since becoming a nonprofit founder and executive director, it has become harder and harder to hide from. Because I long to embody everything that Shefa’s mission and vision can offer our community, I finally received the invitation to face this material directly. I do not want my wound to become the organization’s wound. I want, instead, to find more spaciousness, more freedom, and more flow around the energy of money—for myself, for Shefa, and for all of us—in 5786 and beyond.
Since my very first moments as a human, scarcity wasn’t just a mere mentality, but an embodied reality. My parents, young and poor, had made a connection with a doctor who would waive the hospital fee for my delivery if they could induce me a month early (he was going on vacation in late September). Complications with the induction required me to be in a neonatal incubator for two weeks–without the touch and closeness we know newborns need to thrive and attach to their mothers during this critical period. When I was finally well enough to come home, my first crib was literally a wooden watermelon crate with soft fabric stapled to the interior. We shopped at thrift stores, split Big Macs at McDonald’s for dinner when they ran their “2 for $2” specials in the mid-80’s, and my grandparents watched me most evenings and weekends while my parents, eventually divorced, worked as long and as often as they could.
Now going between two houses, I heard words and phrases like “child support,” “alimony,” and “lien” tossed like slurs between adults who had already struggled so much in their lives, while loudly, unintentionally packing their contempt and anger for each other in my overnight bag along with my pajamas and Winnie the Pooh doll for me to reluctantly try on and play with. Even during this time, my mother would pass me single dollar bills to hand to people holding signs on the side of the road and had us do a weekly shift of Meals on Wheels, delivering food and spending time with elderly and homebound individuals. Money was scarce, yet time, generosity, and presence felt expansive and I still learned by her example to give what I could, when I could.
My mother finally remarried and started a small business with a man who adopted me and whom I called Dad for thirty-five years, and their blend of hard work and luck generated a degree of financial abundance with such speed that made the material existence of life virtually unrecognizable. Two bedrooms became five bedrooms, one car became three, and we went on vacation, and there was a big TV, and…we still shopped for clothes and shoes at places like Ross and Marshall’s. Food could never be thrown away–only eaten to the last morsel, even if you were full or didn’t like it. In my brush with some level of monied privilege, there was a jumble of the frugality of my Jewish grandparents who never spent money on everything with a special kind of late-eighties, Southern Californian nouveau riche.
This is a period of my life where I also encountered types of physical and verbal aggression that would shape my self-understanding up until this very moment—how I think about my body, my intellectual capacity, and my worthiness for unconditional love. At some point, my young mind began to equate deserving and receiving all of this new material prosperity by expecting and accepting emotional impoverishment from those who cared for me. While I’m healing these parts of myself, I have uncovered, embedded in between these layers of scarcity and abundance, a shimmering thread of the necessity of tzedakah that was laid down as well.
At the heart of the prayers of this moment in sacred Jewish time, we are reminded that we have agency to heal our destinies, not to simply accept the patterns and behaviors that have been passed down to us, intergenerationally or personally, even divinely!
On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed - how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who in good time, and who by an untimely death, who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by wild beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangulation and who by lapidation, who shall have rest and who wander, who shall be at peace and who pursued, who shall be serene and who tormented, who shall become impoverished and who wealthy, who shall be debased, and who exalted.
Nevertheless, reconciliation—teshuvah, prayer—tefillah, and giving funds—tzedakah avert the severity of the decree.
In his writings on seeking God’s presence, identity, spiritual struggle, the tension between visible and hidden, and how one lives authentically before God, Rav Shagar comments:
Teshuvah and tefillah—we understand. But why specifically tzedakah? What is unique about tzedakah compared to other mitzvot? One aspect of tzedakah is compassion: one who has mercy upon God’s creatures will be shown mercy from Heaven (Shabbat 151b). But there is another matter, deeper still. Tzedakah—compassion toward another—arises from the sense of equality. I don’t need to feel that I am “giving” to someone else, because who says I am the one who gives? If I happen to have more money, does that mean the money is truly mine? Why should I be satisfied while the other is hungry? Why should I have both in the spiritual and the material, while the other has neither? Tzedakah flows from this sense of equality: “You are all equal before Me”—the wise and the foolish, the righteous and the wicked. From this recognition I cannot feel that I am giving to the other. Just as I don’t feel I am “giving” when I provide for my own children or parents—because they are part of me—so too with all of Israel, and indeed with all of humanity. This is the truest sense of “democracy.” And this feeling does not come from the world itself—because if it were only worldly, then equality would be cheap and hollow (for in the world there really are differences between people). Rather, it comes from the higher awareness that “you are all equal before Me.”
The spiritual practice of dedicating tzedakah, according to Shagar, is the embodied testimony of believing that we are all in this together, enacting the truth that before God, distinctions collapse. This act becomes a performative prayer, appealing to God’s mercy that we finally live in a reality of equality beyond a metaphysical, abstract construct.
For so many of us, money carries pain and fear, scarcity and shame, love withheld and love given. Regardless of how much or how little we have, money can feel like a wound. This is a serious struggle across generations, and it shapes not only our lives but the lives of our communities. Yet even within this wound, Jewish tradition reminds us of a shimmering thread of healing: tzedakah.
As Rav Shagar teaches, tzedakah is not charity from the strong to the weak, but the recognition that we all stand equal before God. This awareness collapses the illusion of separateness and opens the channel through which divine abundance—Shefa—flows into the world.
The irony is sharp: our very name, Shefa, means abundance, and yet we have done so much with so little. To bring Shefa’s vision further into reality—to make legal, Jewishly rooted psychedelic experiences of healing and connection accessible to more people—we need more. More resources to expand access. More community to hold one another in safety and trust. More training to raise up the next generation of Jewish psychedelic guides and leaders. And we need support to share the data of our forthcoming study with researchers, practitioners, and trainers—so Jewish patients and seekers everywhere can receive culturally and spiritually attuned psychedelic care.
We cannot do this alone. From now until the end of 2025, we are asking you to make tzedakah to Shefa part of your ongoing practice—not only during these Days of Awe, but all year long. Step into this recognition of equality and compassion. Help transform scarcity into abundance, so that Shefa can truly become Shefa—for all of us.
Shanah tovah u’metukah l’chayim l’altar u’l’shalom—A good and sweet new year, for life, immediately, and for peace.
Z
