What Did Ancient Rabbis Know About Endowment Spending?

There has been robust debate recently in the Jewish philanthropic community about Jewish communal endowments. Some have argued that endowments should, perhaps, cease to exist. The money, rather than accruing forever, to be disbursed in small sums by unaccountable trustees, should be spent down to meet immediate needs, as it was in the early years of organized Jewish life in the United States. Others believe our communal endowments are doing exactly what they are supposed to do, supporting our Jewish infrastructure in perpetuity. At the same time, a growing number of people today accept parts of the critique of endowments but seek to organize to deploy Jewish endowment money more purposefully, to transform our world away from the destructive trajectory it seems to be on.