Sometimes You Got To Sell The Shirt Off Your Back
We held a charity auction the other night raising money for Mt. Sinai Pediatric Cancer Research with an emphasis on care of children living with Sickle Cell Disease. Very important cause indeed, the second annual wine and music dinner of which I am one of three co-chairs. We raised $340,000 dollars for the donation and I sold one of my new fun Robert Graham designed shirts off my back to someone who offered $1000. I will admit, all 300 people in the room were a little tipsy at that point, but our motivation to raise money for the cause was still very strong. And that is sometimes just what you gotta to do.
We were $20k under our goal. The evening was coming to a close and I jumped on our stage, mentioned we are extending the silent auction another 20 minutes, so please go back and bid and that I had an offer to buy my shirt, starting bid $1000 to a woman at table 16. “Any further bids”, trying to channel Charles Anton our wine auctioneer from Zachy’s. To no avail, no further bids, sold. While I wanted it to go higher given I really liked this wine inspired shirt, I committed to sell it and we were another $1000 closer to the goal. Who cares, it’s for the kids, for cancer research I rationalized. Plus, I get to say, I literally sold the shirt off my back in a dramatic act of philanthropy.
But I’m writing this and trying to self-analyze why I hammed it up a little up there, sorta embarrassing myself, and why the hell am I retelling this story publicly as another sub stack writing. It really is not about trying to promote what a good guy I am, (fine, I am trying to be a nice human), but to make a point about giving—about philanthropy and working in these strange times.
It was odd night start to the fundraiser, as erry wild-fire smoke engulfed a blanket of orange on NYC. Mother Nature was showing us New Yorkers what the West has experienced the last few years of climate changes affects, of the interconnected globe, and need to do much more to support our planet. I looked for an opening joke in the welcome address, something like “Thanks for coming to our wine event tonight, if you’re looking for the Canadian Cannabis smoke event, that’s outside…”. Not funny, didn’t use it. But the tone was unconsciously more serious and concerning given the haze outside our windows. It was a serious reminder that we got problems, we got work to do, and we all got to do more.
Something in that smokey haze was inspiration to work harder to fix the problems in this world. The Hebrew expression of Tikkun-Olom, repair the world, comes to mind. I sometimes overuse it, but it is so appropriate. And in the fundraiser we were hosting, just one of hundreds of medical needs that needs support, this was a drop in the bucket of the issues out there. There is the war in Ukraine, guns control, school support, the plethora of problems everywhere we need to do fundraisers everyday for. I’m not giving up my day job to become an activist, I’m way way way too selfish for that, but if we were raising money for Cancer research, then hell, let’s do whatever needs to be done to raise more money right then and there.
Maimonides, the great Jewish scholar from the 12th century Spain came up with the 8 levels of Charity.
1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed.
2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little.
3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked.
4. Giving before being asked.
5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity.
6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity.
7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other's identity.
8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant.
Therefore, I think Maimonides might say selling one’s shirt at a charity auction from the stage is between the 5 and 6. A decent score, not the best, but certainly not the worst. Just saying, we all need to push the limits of what we can do for this planet, for the humans on it, and not be lazy about what we are putting into it. Lots to do, take the extra effort, work hard, play hard, and let’s try and repair the world.