Word: kirsch
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...Steve Kirsch is the first to admit it. He is too damn rich. "I can't spend all my money," he sighs. "The best things in life just aren't that expensive." At 41, the founder of the Internet search-service Infoseek is worth more than $137 million. But while many of the other fresh-faced moguls in Silicon Valley have plowed their outrageous fortunes into still more outrageous indulgences, Kirsch decided in 1992 to do something subversive: he created his own charitable fund...
...dumped more than $10 million into it and plans to increase the fund's size to $50 million by 2000. Local libraries, environmental groups and his alma mater, M.I.T., have benefited handsomely; but Kirsch directs the bulk of his charity to scientists seeking cures for diseases that touch him. Kirsch's father is a diabetic who was recently found to have cancer; his mother suffers from macular degeneration. "Someday I could have to go through what my parents are. So if I can apply my dollars now, then when I'm older, it's possible I can have a better...
...Kirsch is bucking a bigger trend. In this era of plenty, Americans haven't spread the wealth too far: the percentage of households making charitable contributions has remained unchanged since 1987, and those who do give actually donate a smaller slice of their income (1.6%) than Americans did 30 years ago (2.1%). In dollar terms, though, last year individuals gave a record $109 billion to charity, up $20 billion over...
...then, "at last," writes Kirsch, "Moses seemed to run out of both laws and memories." The 120-year-old "went up from the steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the summit of Pisgah, opposite Jericho," recounts the Bible. And then, "Moses the servant of the Lord died there at the command of the Lord. He [God] buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day." There follows this spare but eloquent elegy. "Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses--whom...
There have been attempts to find Moses' tomb. But from Scripture all we have is a chorus of complaint, a last hurrah and then nothing. The stark ending moves Kirsch to acrid eloquence. "The life of Moses can be understood as an existential tragedy," he writes. "He was cast adrift at birth in a hostile world, he spent a long and lonely life in constant pursuit of a goal that always eluded him, and he died a lonely death...