Due to out fast-paced society, fast-paced because new discoveries are being made all the time which ends up in things constantly changing, even personal fitness trainers have to use CPE courses so as to be in good standing professionally.
As a former personal trainer myself, I can say, however, that the common trainer may still not be as educated as such accreditations may wish to suggest.

Those employed by chain gyms, which is the vast majority of those today, are often children for whom personal training is a gig they happen to have come upon.
At something like New York Sports Club (NYSC), they wear the red tee shirts that say “here to help you.”
Now some are, obviously, quite knowledgeable and rather enthusiastic about the subject, but for most it is just a job that seemed to fit nicely with a casual interest in sports.

The certification exam they take is honest and rigorous enough for any employing a multiple-choice format, yet it’s really nothing more than a memory test and really indicates no real expertise.
The required CPE courses run generally along the same lines, regurgitating information by rote.
The truth is, these trainers do not know anything that could not be obtained by anyone who logs online.

Of course, one may say the same of any career – but when it comes to physical fitness, the very nature of the discipline enables for no small amount of misinformation and outright quackery.
The reason for this is really quite simple: no one really knows.

Yes it’s true.
I’m a former personal fitness trainer and the only one who can tell the absolute truth: no one really knows.
Unless he or she is God or was there at the creation of Adam and Eve, no one really knows.
Thus, all the personal trainer CPE courses in the world isn’t going to make up for this plain but shocking truth – “the human body is centuries ahead of medical science,” as Doctor Sir Roger Bannister explained.

Affiliate marketing is a good way for the tech-savvy hobbyist for making some money on the side.
For a select few who have been able to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!

Probably the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good have been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
While still a medical student, he started off a website committed to rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though soon enough it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views monthly, as certified by independent research firms.

Dr. Kim was already well-off because of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting fairly little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to devote his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the arena of professional blogging.

Similar instances of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by making free MySpace designs for the people to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in frequent is that their success is entirely traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will make money.

But how do you get the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – assured.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!

Lots of personal household safes have been turning up at Japanese police stations in the wake of that country’s recent disaster.
They haven’t yet only been recovered by rescue workers digging through rubble but have also been washed up ashore, and now law enforcement is running out of space to store them.

Up to now, these safes have been kept in the station parking lot, but with each station holding onto several hundred at a time, authorities have decided to try a more pro-active approach to reuniting them with their owners past simply watching for those people to show up.
Japanese police now hope to open these safes themselves in the hopes of obtaining identifying information within with which to make their own inquiries.

Under Japanese law, there is a little more than three weeks for lost items to be claimed by their owners.
After twenty-three days, finders can turn into keepers – or the government takes ownership.
Police hope to reunite disaster victims with their belongings before the finders/keepers-law can take effect.
Normally, given the special situations involved, extensions to the usual deadline have been provided, but any haste that can be made would surely be welcome by the victims.

The matter is especially important because of the Japanese practice, found especially amongst their elderly, of saving money and other belongings not in banks but at home.
Such “wardrobe savings,” as the Japanese expression goes, is very frequent but has become quite the catastrophe for disaster victims who have lost literally everything short of their lives and the garments on their backs.
Thus, any energy expedited on behalf of such people would not simply be significantly appreciated but is absolutely necessary to ensure even their very continued survival.
Luckily, of course, it is because of the exclusive nature of Japan that valuables have been completed, along with the absence of looting and other rioting – a fact not lost on envious foreign observers.

The affiliate marketing testimonials just keep pouring in: the most recent situation history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away cost-free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It’s no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.

Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its dramatic power.
Ashley Qualls developed a website that’s nothing more than a repository of her styles for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download entirely free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.

Affiliate marketing works.
The real challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people goes crazy for.
Another great internet riches success story concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny while still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
As one of the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers emerged calling in equally quick succession.

That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you need numbers; you need people.

So how to get all those people?
Yet again, providing something of great interest to a large amount of people.
Fundamentally, the same first principle of any business.
Identify a need and fulfill it!

So it turns out that Jesse James enjoys Nazi paraphernalia.
No relation to the iconic Wild West figure, the only claim to fame that this latter-day Jesse James has is to be married to Sandra Bullock, one of the most beloved actresses of all time.
Indeed, she has been crowned “America’s Sweetheart” by the celebrity press for not simply her good-girl roles but for her legendary off-screen generosity, donating millions at a time, most significantly in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the catastrophic trifecta of earthquake-tsunami-nuclear-crisis that has just lately hit Japan.

So how could she have tolerated such an obvious lout?
They were always one of the most startling couples in Hollywood, a bad-boy/good-girl pair straight out of central casting and screenwriters’ workshops.
What could they possibly have supplied their guests for wedding favors?
Almost sounds like the perfect set-up for one of Tinsteltown’s formulaic romantic comedies.
However, the real life version that has played out so far more resembles tragedy for the Oscar-winning actress.

As for the bad boy, he’s now happily married to tattoo model Michelle McGee, who’s also posed in Nazi regalia.
In fact, McGee has the acronym “WP” etched prominently on her legs, letters which indicate “white power” in racist circles but which she claims only refers to a component of the female anatomy that’s wet!

One can only imagine what was presented as wedding favors to the guests.

Of a particular perverse fascination to many observers, however, remains the query of what Bullock knew and the follow-up ones of how would she not have if she really did not and why would she put up with such racist interests if she actually did know.
Many hypothesize that perhaps she was just too harmless and generous, naive when it came to the white supremacist imagery long favored by biker culture and generous regardless towards such naughtiness in a “bad boy” – again, straight outside of central casting: you can’t make this stuff up!

Yes, better to gossip about wedding favors instead.

Wine racks are a sign of the serious oenophile, or wine conoisseur.
That’s “racks,” plural, mind you – rows and rows of them, in all likelihood inside a climate-controlled basement cellar, what’s more!

How can one get going?
Several fairly good introductions exist online.
Just before purchasing wine racks and other paraphernalia of the hobby, do a simple Google search and peruse as many as possible to get a good all-round education.

Generally, the first thing to do is to sample some wines.
Again, using the internet should be a great place to start: check to see whether any wine tasting events are being held in your area, whether sponsored by a club or a merchant or even – specifically – a local vineyards!
Once you create your own perception of your own tastes, you will be ready for those wine racks for your own home!

No, not a full-fledged professional cellar such as described at the outset, unfortunately, but simple decorative fare good for your kitchen or den or, even, study!
A cornucopia of options exists for the rest of us who cannot afford dedicating our basements to storing wine.
Racks can be produced out of almost any material currently, into just about any design.
Some aren’t even immediately recognizable as such without actually holding a bottle or two of wine!

But you’re not done yet.
If you should really get into wine, you might “wine” up getting a hundred-dollar wine newsletter – Robert Parker’s famous “The Wine Advocate.”
He’s the premier wine critic in the business, so much so that what he says will actually have an effect on the market!
But one thing to always remember, no matter how far along you go in this hobby: trust your own taste buds.
Never feel like a thousand-dollar bottle of wine is supposed to taste good!
If you enjoy the twenty-dollar bottle, that’s what you like – period.

Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to create noise once in a while.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to popular everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera based on Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.

Perhaps the most famous unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is responsible for the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that musical instruments already are present which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Indeed, one such device, a mark tree, is also often known as a chime tree or a group of bar chimes.
It is played out by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, generally made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and attached in pitch order.

Similar instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are often thought of as percussion instruments, generally used by musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and thus are capable of melodies.
But these are often very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is created by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the well known children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells through part of its final credits.

Situated in one of The Big Apple’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University is dedicated to both teaching and research. As one of the most selective of medical schools in the country, only some hundred hopefuls are admitted each year – from out of some six thousand candidates every year. Now named Weill Cornell Medical College and, even more often, simply “Weill Cornell,” the school was partially endowed by Sanford Weill, an American banker and philanthropist who was the former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife personally contributed two hundred and fifty million dollars to the medical school already at Cornell, and he was able to secure another one hundred and fifty million dollars.

The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, many prominent only locally but generous all the same, like the famous businessman Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. It was also the first American medical school to have locations outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering a six-year integrated curriculum focused on patient care. The school is also famous for all its many notable graduates, people such as Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other alumnus luminaries include Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Anyway, despite all the well-funded backing, the financial aspects of a medical education are severe, with some forty-two thousand dollars needed for the first year and thirty-eight thousand required for the second. Nevertheless, that’s a bargain considering Cornell’s law school tuition, which adds up to almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the same four years!

The recent Japanese catastrophe has shone a spotlight on the country’s relatively unique social structure.
Unlike many other instances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the misfortune — and this has tremendously impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and further sympathy from the world.

As can be imagined, articles have shown up trying to reveal the phenomenon of people who continue to be law-abiding citizens even with being deprived of not only creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are filled to capacity with all the personal household safes of persons which have washed back to ground or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog trapped under rubble, declining to leave!

Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people remember that the country is a wealthy one, a technologically advanced one, and one that is arguably uniquely homogenous one of many leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Of course household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least left unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no inducement to loot and riot when the country as a whole offers so many resources to provide succor.

Others note that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are witnessed simply because they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that’s not what a Japanese person does, plain and simple.
This side of the discussion notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims continue to suffer – yet they do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.

As an Internet Marketer you understand the amount of work you actually need to do to get your business to realize success. In addition to building merchandise, you need to market those products and solutions and build buzz for those products. You must track the income you make, the e-mail addresses you receive and your customers’ information. It is vital to work on your customer relationships and keep them in very good shape as well as keeping the lines of communication between potential buyers and future clients. Not only that however, you should work on developing your reputation. There are only a limited quantity of hours in the day; how are you supposed to get the whole thing done? Here are some time management suggestions that you could apply to help yourself be more productive each day.

Set temporary and long-run aims for yourself. This means that you have to write a list of everything that you need to do from the money you want to produce next year to the quick e-mail that you forgot to write this morning. Write out precisely what you want to achieve and then break down your list: things that will take a massive amount time, things that will take only a little time and things that you can easily do right now. First do every one of the points on the “right now” list and then program out your long and short term goals.

Write a to-do list on a daily basis. You may either create the day’s to-do list towards the end of one day for the next day or every morning as you settle in to get to work. Write out every one of the elements that you have to get accomplished before the end of the day. Then, after those, jot down one of the short term tasks that you need to put work into and then one of the long term projects that you need to work on. You shouldn’t work on the end of the list until you have finished the beginning of the list. If you finish everything on your list–the “now” stuff as well as the short and long term stuff, you can choose whether to keep working on larger projects or if you’d like to reward yourself with some free time.

Do not forget to allow time for breaks. Most people think that the key to productivity is dependent upon your ability to force yourself to stay at your desk for lots of hours every single day and not ever allow a break for anything but visiting the bathroom. The fact is that people are the most productive when they begin working. So allow yourself some time for a couple of breaks every day. A quick morning break, a quick afternoon break and a long lunch break are good breaks to make yourself take each day. Some people enjoy taking a couple of minutes just to relax after they finish bigger projects on their to-do lists.

There are lots of ways that you can use to help yourself get more done each day. The best way to ensure that you get enough done each day is to know what, exactly; it is that you need to do. If you understand what you need to do each day then you are going to be more likely to stick to your tasks and actually do them.

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So you want to be a lawyer. You know it will mean a lot of studying, a lot of time used with books – but you like reading, and figuring things out, and you enjoy words, language, and all the semantic nuances involved.

You even know that the LSAT exam for admission to law school is difficult, and something to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for, for special prep courses, coaching classes and the like. You also realize that law school itself will be difficult as nails, at least through the all-too-crucial First Year.

Great. Maybe you even know that you will be forever hitting the books as a practicing lawyer, forever taking online CPE courses and their exams, one after the other, in order to maintain your position with the professional association governing your licensure.

Super.

But did you know it will be pretty tough getting a high-enough-paying job as lawyer in order to repay your student loans? Actually, those online CPE courses will definitely cost some money, too.

Oh, you probably think you have that covered. You’ll graduate at the top of your class, or you’ll be accepted into an Ivy League law school and graduate none too low in the rankings so as to get hired by a top corporate law firm and effortlessly recoup your investment in two to three years’ time.

And without a doubt, if such a thing does happen, your odds would be a lot better than those for virtually the rest of your peers, even in this economy. But “better than” doesn’t mean “inherently good.” ’Cause guess what – globalization is coming to the legal profession also.

Yes, yes it’s true – outsourcing. Without a doubt, some of the online CPE courses available on the worldwide web were developed overseas! And though the legal profession has attempted to resist it (after all, it took a whole decade for everyone to switch from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word!), it’s finally started to affect the industry.

Blu Ray media is the latest thing to hit the home entertainment market in some time now. Their main claim to fame rests upon the startling visual clarity offered by the 1080p resolution.. Though the difference between a VHS image and one from a DVD is noticeable enough, that between the DVD and a Blu-ray disc will knock your eyes out! There is no other way to describe the difference other than with hyperbole. Small surprise, then, that now that consumers are adopting the new format in droves, a market has grown around recordable Blu-ray media that allows people to preserve their own special occasions in the clearest most life-like manner possible yet.

New Blu Ray releases are but the latest embodiment of the notion captured by the famous phrase of French origin that translates as “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” That’s because just as with the introduction of DVD a decade earlier, many releases failed to live up to what is possible with the Blu-ray format. Sharper pictures? Digital audio delivered across more than seven discrete channels, including the subwoofer? Not always, even with the twenty-five gigabytes of storage offered on conventional single-layer discs. Even if nothing compared to the numbers affected with DVD, when VHS resolutions were just copied and pasted to disc, still too many a Blu-ray title seems rather like the DVD version!

The iPhone. Quite a few call it the most reliable cellphone on the current market. They have earned extremely good ratings, supplies simple functionality, high quality components and its options seem unlimited. There has even been a range of attempted phone copies to the iPhone, not any of which even come close to what a real iPhone offers. A few people think that the Apple iPhone offers you too much extravagance with a sale price to match. At the same time, if you have ever utilized an iPhone you realize there may be just certainly nothing that comes close. With top online stores providing wonderful reductions on unlocked cell phones for instance the iPhone and many others, it truly is now more inexpensive than ever. Therefore if you did not yet had the good luck of feeling an iPhone for your self, put it off no more, go find yourself an iPhone at a price you can certainly have the funds for.

Sam Antar was the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s electronics retail empire.
Sam is a much sought-after speaker on the lecture circuit nowadays, and his seminars may even earn CPE and CLE credits for the attendees.

That’s because he is a convicted fraudster.

Ethics continuing education courses are generally self-paced correspondence courses one takes at one’s own leisure as a part of maintaining one’s professional good standing.
Reading through Sam’s site on the worldwide web, however, is as educational as any structured academic account can be.

As the former CFO of Crazy Eddie’s, Sam presided over one of the most well-known scandals in the chronicles of corporate crime.
He lays everything out, bare, raw, and unembellished by any of the typical self-serving rationaliziations often given to insiders’ accounts – all unadulterated on his website.

This is an ethics CPE course like no other – if it were accredited as such.
As it is, it’s just a website – but oh, what a website!

White-collar offense never sounded so exciting.
That’s because the Crazy Eddie’s scandal was at heart a soap opera presenting all the common human foibles known to a Greek chorus – lust, greed, betrayal, as well as family.
Yes, family.

The familial element in this drama makes this instance of corporate offense so – if the pun is going to be pardoned – familiar to lay readers, grabbing and holding their awareness where other accounts could lose them under a hill of technical information.
However, it isn’t that Sam offers no minutiae of his own; his very goal nowadays is to combat criminal activity, after all; it’s that these details, which would be so boring otherwise minus the benefit of a human drama in which to place them in the proper perspective, come to vibrant life against the context of a family power struggle that resonantes forcefully with everyone who’s actually underwent any semblance of sibling rivalry.

How’s that for an ethics CPE course!

Just about the most crucial developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent stress on ethics, resulting in the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, additionally it is quite sad that standard human decency should today be so unusual as to warrant an explicit prerequisite.

Obviously, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official understanding for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly more intense scenarios than having ethics CPE requirements – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which first made such courses so vital!
But there’s no denying the fact that when simple human decency needs to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were initially encountered (likely an unlucky fact in itself, as the first place anyone should come by their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore miserable race to the bottom for all.

Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers are not even given the protection of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, such as General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make substantial use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world truly achieved when corporate bean-counters still go on to merely invent new ways of posting a profit while increasing productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is everybody going on and on about China constantly?

Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.

It’s not like most people desire to work on an assembly line anyway, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.

All right, so it’s not simply NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s more and more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that a lot of the clothing nowadays come from even more exotic locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?

In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing might be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products such as wind mills and solar panels, and witout a doubt they are well on their way towards dominating those industries.

But must it be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise mean everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they simply gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or can Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone involved?

Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with that relating to the NBA.
Basketball continues to grow in popularity over there while years ago a structured exhibition game of American football was canceled virtually at the last minute.
If this serves as any suggestion, it may be that being engaged surpasses being on the sidelines!

Among the most recognized names in American charity for just about a hundred years, Boys Town was awarded National Historic Landmark status in 1985 at its original Omaha, Nebraska location. Established by Father Edward J. Flanagan as a boys’ orphanage in 1917, its success has led to some thirteen others all across the United States. Two major Hollywood motion pictures about it were made, starring some of the industry’s best talent including Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. But what really put it on the philanthropic map was its original progessive method of juvenile care that has become an example worldwide.

As may be imagined, the good work of Boys Town attracted considerable financial support as time goes by, star-studded attention that includes many a prominent individual from business, politics, and entertainment, from someone like real estate developer Isaac Toussie to United States Senator Richard Durbin. Indeed, donor money account for close to one-fifth of total funding during any given fiscal year, with program expenditures taking up like eighty-six percent of total expenses.

One of the most important endeavors undertaken by the charity involves internal research by its Boys Town National Research Institute (NRI), created to properly assess the efficacy of itself. Taking advantage of the most recent methods, the NRI separates Boys Town from fellow aid organizations in how it is primarily numbers-driven, pro-actively adopting technology to remain relevant in the new century.

And so Boys Town is still a pioneer, helping to change modern family and child care. Critical to their approach has been an emphasis on combining the array of available services – from governmental and non-governmental sources – to provide a holistic solution capable of addressing modern complexities. With a range of projects in process, Boys Town expects to stay on top of changing needs.

For me, On Off Digital World is similar to the old Montgomery Ward in Penn Station, one of them big old old-fashioned electronics retailers that once existed throughout New York City. These guys were just mom-and-pop operations that got kind of successful, to where they employed perhaps fifty employees — still considered a small business by most standards but certainly still successful. But it was all before the big box stores and I was just a youth then so they all seemed “big” to me — after all, they had all kinds of gadgets on display! That’s what comes to mind whenever I chance on one of the few remaining stores like this.

A concern with justice, with fairness, has always been at the heart of Judaism, from the very moment when Abraham questioned G-d over the morality of destroying a whole city for its wickedness lest there should prove to be even just ten righteous men or women residing there. This passion for balanced dealings is what lead Talmudic scholars to sanction Jewish farmers from yoking oxen with horses for ploughing the field, for being stronger it is evident that an ox would always have to do most of the work. It is a similar sense of responsibility that informs Jewish notions of the tzedakah, or religiously prescribed donations to charity.

And actually, the Hebrew word “tzedakah” literally translates as “justice,” “righteousness,” but now refers to the cultural practice – indeed, the cultural institution – of setting aside income in order to make a charitable donation. Performing tzedakah is regarded as a religious obligation, such that tradition holds the act to be one of only three types that may mitigate any divine decree. Thus it is that even criminals will donate to charity in the hopes of actually annulling any heavenly judgment!

Such hopes and fears aside, at the heart of tzedakah is a spirit of social responsibility and social justice. Judaism teaches that all men are brothers – then asks, why does my brother not fare as well as me? From this simple yet not-easy-to-answer question comes the rabbis’ injunction to provide for others as a natural part of everyday living. Hence performing tzedakah is so common in the Jewish community that two categories of tzedakah have developed: the classic religiously inspired sort and another undertaken to mark important occasions such as bar mitzvahs and high holy days such as Pesach. This latter class returns a feeling of individual free will to the act of giving, while the former remains an essential feature of the Jewish way – so necessary, moreover, that even the poor themselves are to give, as they are able, so that one need not be a Robert Toussie in order to be of assistance.