Charity doesn’t always need to be at home

Rabbi Daniel Levy’s concern ( November 4) that the Chief Rabbi’s Ben Azzai Programme will be “a distraction from local needs”, suggests he misunderstands the purpose of the project.

As one of the 16 students fortunate enough to have secured a place on it, I take the view that (kindness) isn’t a finite stock to be carefully apportioned but an unlimited flow which, if carefully directed, can reach as many people as we want it to.

Rabbi Levy fears that going to India will distract attention from more local needs and confuse me as to where my obligations lie. It won’t. There is no confusion. I am well aware of my prime responsibilities to my family and community but these need not preclude my sense of responsibility to wider society and the rest of the world.

So whilst Rabbi Levy is right to emphasise the primacy of charity beginning at home, it is in order to sharpen our domestic social action that we are engaging in this international mission. The point of the programme is to shift the narrative away from each of us “doing our bit” towards ensuring there in no ‘off’ setting on our switch. DM Seitler Manchester M14

Tzedek is proud to be the delivery partner of the Chief Rabbi’s Ben Azzai programme and UK partner of Gabriel Project Mumbai, to which the Chief Rabbi is sending his Ben Azzai scholars.

As a Jewish charity committed to the eradication of extreme poverty, we see no contradiction between the principles of set out by Rabbi Levy in his article and those of which impel us to endeavour to right gross injustice in the world. Tzedek has 25 years of experi-