DANNY SIEGEL

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Danny Siegel, officially founded the Ziv Tzedakah Fund in 1981 after making several trips to Israel. Our tradition teaches that anyone on a Mitzvah mission will be saved from harm, and so, on each trip, Danny followed this age-old custom and asked friends and relatives for a dollar or two to give away to Tzedakah upon his arrival in the Holy Land. Once in Israel, Danny went in search of “the Good People”, ordinary Israelis who were working tirelessly and simply trying to make the world a better place.

In the 1970s, in Israel, within a short time, he learned of the efforts of such greats as Hadassah Levi, who made her life’s work the rescue of abandoned Down Syndrome babies from hospitals, Myriam Mendilow, who found Jerusalem’s poor, elderly residents on the streets of the city and gave them respect and new purpose in her program, Yad L’Kashish (Lifeline for the Old), and Uri Lupolianski, a young teacher who started Israel’s now famous medical equipment lending program, Yad Sarah, in his living room (and is now the current mayor of Jerusalem). (While Ziv supported Lifeline and Yad Sarah for many years, they have grown and are very self-sufficient now!)

Returning from each trip, Danny wrote a one-page report to all of his donors in which he described all of the places that he had distributed their Tzedakah money. From that first $955 Danny collected and gave away, Ziv has grown to an organization that in 2004 completed its 29th year of operation and has distributed more than $6,700,000.

Danny is a well-known author, lecturer, and poet who has spoken in more than 500 North American Jewish communities, to synagogues, JCC’s, Federations, and other communal organizations on Tzedakah and Jewish values, besides reading from his own poetry. He is the author of 29 books on such topics as Mitzvah heroes and practical and personalized Tzedakah, and has produced an anthology of 500 selections of Talmudic quotes about living the Jewish life well called Where Heaven and Earth Touch. Danny is also a poet and several of his published books are poetry.

Danny has been referred to as "The World’s Greatest Expert on Microphilanthropy", "The Feeling Person’s Thinker", and "The Pied Piper of Tzedakah".

Danny has a B.S. in Comparative Literature from Columbia University’s School of General Studies, and a Bachelor’s and Master’s of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

He is one of three recipients of the prestigious 1993 Covenant Award for Exceptional Jewish Educators.

Read Danny's autobiography, a short essay written as a magazine article.