This morn­ing, as I walked 144 feet from my office to my favorite lunch spot, I passed five peo­ple ask­ing for mon­ey. One has been stand­ing out­side my gallery three days a week for the past two years with a card­board sign read­ing ​“Preg­nant and Home­less” — the longest ges­ta­tion in human his­to­ry. Down­town Dan, who lives entire­ly on the spare change peo­ple drop into his gui­tar case, nod­ded hel­lo as he sang and played. On days off and dur­ing bath­room breaks, he stores his gui­tar in a stair­well off our entry­way. I got a friend­ly shoutout, too, from the tall guy who has been rais­ing dona­tions for ​“Black Boys At Risk” on and off for a half dozen years. He has news­pa­per clip­pings and offi­cial-look­ing gov­ern­ment forms that he flash­es at passers­by, as he asks them if they care about kids. I have nev­er checked the paper­work and vac­il­late between skep­ti­cism and belief. Next is some­one I’ve nev­er seen before, a white dude beg­ging a bit more aggres­sive­ly than the reg­u­lars. I look him in the eye, acknowl­edg­ing his human­i­ty, as I have been taught, and hope the old-timers will come to my aid if need be. Then, because it is the sea­son of giv­ing, I see a red-suit­ed San­ta shiv­er­ing while ring­ing his Sal­va­tion Army bell.

One friend drops a dol­lar into every pan he pass­es. Anoth­er choos­es one lucky recip­i­ent dai­ly for a ten-dol­lar bill. A third only gives food so that his mon­ey is not spent on drugs or liquor (though he often spends his mon­ey on those exact things for him­self). But is that our business?

In 1791, the writer Samuel John­son, in answer to the same ques­tions, asked, ​“Why should the poor be denied such sweet­en­ers of their existence?”

In 2017, Pope Fran­cis said, ​“Give them the mon­ey, and don’t wor­ry about it.”

Saint Fran­cis of Assisi would prob­a­bly avoid the ques­tion entire­ly and pre­fer to do the beg­ging him­self: ​“Grant me the trea­sure of sub­lime poverty.”

Had I con­tin­ued up the street to the library in my small, most­ly lib­er­al, good-heart­ed, upper-mid­dle class, col­lege-edu­cat­ed, Amer­i­can town, I could have seen, in the same room where I have read my poet­ry, the unhinged door to the law office of Silent Cal Coolidge, our for­mer may­or and US pres­i­dent, whose six mem­o­rable words, ​“the busi­ness of Amer­i­ca is busi­ness,” has one hun­dred mil­lion more Google hits than the words of our sis­ter town’s res­i­dents, Robert Frost — ​“Good fences make good neigh­bors” — and Emi­ly Dick­in­son — ​“Hope is the thing with feath­ers.” Our cur­rent may­or encour­ages us not to give to indi­vid­u­als, but to drop our change ​“into the mouth of the Hap­py Frog dona­tion sta­tion,” where mon­ey is col­lect­ed to help fund soup kitchens and shelters.

After lunch, I sit at my desk and open appeals from local arts orga­ni­za­tions. It is that time of the year: the giv­ing sea­son. Two phil­an­thropies have added a note penned to me per­son­al­ly. Next, I open my synagogue’s annu­al appeal. Shall I check ​“anony­mous,” or add my name to help encour­age oth­ers to give?

Philoso­pher Peter Singer tells us, ​“We need to get over our reluc­tance to speak open­ly about the good we do. Silent giv­ing will not change a cul­ture that deems it sen­si­ble to spend all your mon­ey on your­self.” This has become the mantra of what is now known as ​“effec­tive altruism.”

Jesus Christ dis­agrees. ​“When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trum­pets, as the hyp­ocrites do in the syn­a­gogues and on the streets, to be hon­ored by others.”

I think about the hyp­ocrites who both trum­pet and give less than promised. This week’s news­pa­per head­lines exposed two bil­lion­aires whose char­i­ta­ble foun­da­tions gave less than the law requires.

How much shall I give? To how many? How often? Am I doing enough? What are we teach­ing our chil­dren as we walk past the panhandlers?

My wife urges me to give joy­ous­ly! ​“The more we give, the hap­pi­er we become,” she says, quot­ing Bud­dhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.

But I admit, I most­ly give as an oblig­a­tion, and not cheer­ful­ly. I wish I were a bet­ter person.

“Relax,” says Moses ben Mai­mon, bet­ter known as Mai­monides (or the Ram­bam in Hebrew), a rab­bi, doc­tor, astronomer, lawyer, and schol­ar, who is con­sid­ered the great­est Jew­ish philoso­pher of the Mid­dle Ages and, for many, of all time. ​“You are already on the first rung of the Gold­en Lad­der.” There is no place to go but up.

Mai­monides lived from 1138 to 1204 and was born under Mus­lim rule in what we now call Spain. He is also well regard­ed in Islam­ic coun­tries for his sci­en­tif­ic and med­ical writ­ings. In his first major book, the Mish­neh Torah, he explains the rea­sons behind Jew­ish laws and prac­tices and invents an eight-step lad­der that leads to a fair society.

• The first rung of the lad­der is when a dona­tion is giv­en, but giv­en reluctantly.
• The sec­ond rung is when you give cheer­ful­ly, but less than you should.
• The third rung is when you give to the poor after being asked.
• The fourth rung is when you give to the poor before you are asked.
• The fifth rung is when the donor does not know the name of the recip­i­ent, so the donor can’t give in to pride if the two pass each oth­er on the street.
• The sixth rung is when the donor gives anony­mous­ly, so the recip­i­ent does not feel shame or indebt­ed­ness if they pass each oth­er on the street.
• The sev­enth rung is when nei­ther the receiv­er nor the giv­er knows each oth­er — so nei­ther pride nor shame are possible.
• The eighth and high­est rung on the lad­der is when you cre­ate a job for some­one, or loan them enough to start their own busi­ness, so they can care for them­selves and give char­i­ty to others.

Maimonides’s father taught him that the word of God oblig­at­ed all Jews to give 10 per­cent of their earn­ings to peo­ple in need. You were allowed to give up to 20 per­cent but not more — so you didn’t end up hav­ing to rely on char­i­ty your­self. (Dear top one-per­centers: Mai­monides made an excep­tion for the very wealthy.)

Most of us trav­el up and down that lad­der, depend­ing on the day, yet we still tend to think of char­i­ty as an act of help­ing those less for­tu­nate. I praise myself when I put some coins in a beggar’s cup or write a check to a char­i­ta­ble organization.

But tzedakah, the Hebrew word for char­i­ty, has a dif­fer­ent mean­ing. In Judaism, giv­ing to the poor is not viewed as gen­eros­i­ty, but rather as an act of jus­tice, fair­ness, and right­eous­ness all rolled into one; it is a sacred and eth­i­cal obligation.

Mai­monides says that it is hum­bling to help anoth­er human with less than our­selves, because we know that we could just as eas­i­ly be in their posi­tion. And the poor should not feel ashamed, for God could have just as eas­i­ly giv­en them all they need. Mai­monides thought of tzedakah as a part­ner­ship between the rich and the poor. If any­thing, it is the giv­er who should thank the receiv­er, for allow­ing them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do a good deed.

Even Calvin Coolidge under­stood that ​“no per­son was ever hon­ored for what they received. Hon­or has been the reward for what they gave.”

Tonight, on my walk home, I saw Down­town Dan a few feet in front of me. I watched as he emp­tied the coins from his gui­tar case. He count­ed out one third to put in his pock­et, dropped a third into the mouth of the Friend­ly Frog, and the final third he dis­trib­uted to those even more in need and, hum­ming to him­self, he con­tin­ued on his way.