NAVIGATING THE WARRENof makeshift squatter shacks ina Bangkok slum built along arailway track, Marc Gold takesa wrong turn and gets hopeless-

ly lost. He winds up at a small mosque in anarrow dead-end alley hung with laundry andredolent of rotting garbage. The AmericanJew buttonholes a wiry, bare-chested localwith a wispy beard and a knitted hat and askshim for directions.

“This happens all the time,” notes Gold, aman who has clocked up enough mileage inhis travels over the past two decades to takehim around the globe several times over. “Inthe end I always get there,” he insists.

“There” in this case turns out to be a smalllean-to with open sides, squeezed betweenrickety cubicle-like residences. It opens rightonto the rails, where now and then a trainrumbles by deafeningly. Today, a Saturdaymorning, the edifice will function as a class-room for a dozen or so local children whoperch on plastic chairs arranged in a semi-circle. They’re here to learn English from for-eign volunteers; Gold is here to check up ontheir progress.

The American is sponsoring the educationof several of these children, including Usna,a playful 9-year-old in a headscarf. She lost aleg two years ago when she fell under a pass-ing train. “I want to learn English so I canbecome a teacher and help children like uslearn about the world,” she says with child-like sincerity.

Following the class, Gold bonds with hisprotégés by donning a rubber dog nose andproceeding to bark, sniff, pant and loll histongue at them with make-believe canine

zeal. The kiddos shriek joyfully and pretendto pat him. “It’s a cheap trick, but it alwaysworks,” he explains.

At moments like this, Gold, who is 62,short and full of beans, looks nothing likethe university professor he once was, teach-ing psychology and psychotherapy at com-munity colleges in the San Francisco Bay

Area. A divorcé with two adult sons, Goldtook early retirement in 2003 and has beenon the road ever since. Mexico,Mozambique, Tibet, Nepal, Sri Lanka,Pakistan, China, Cambodia, Laos,Indonesia, Thailand – he’s visited them all,several of them numerous times.

But he isn’t much interested in the sights.

THE JERUSALEM REPORT JULY 4, 201126

JEWISH WORLD

Good as GoldA retired college professorfrom San Francisco has set out to change livesfrom Afghanistan toIndonesia – a few dollarsat a time

Tibor Krausz Bangkok

CHEAP TRICK: Marc Gold, wearing a rubber dog nose, entertains Thai Muslim children in aBangkok slum, where he sponsors the education of several of them. ‘It’s a cheap trick, but italways works,’ he explains.

Instead, Gold pursues his own brand of trav-el: philanthropic tourism. “I try to go wheremost of the poor people are,” he notes.

He slogs muddy dirt tracks to a far-flungTibetan village to hand out, like a wanderingSanta, warm blankets, soccer balls and artsupplies to children at a local orphanage. Hestops by municipal garbage dumps teemingwith destitute child scavengers in PhnomPenh, Cambodia, to sign them up for schol-arships at a local school. He traipses aroundBangkok slums in search of underprivileged

youngsters to get them to drama therapy andEnglish classes.

Dubbed the “shoestring philanthropist,”Gold, who sports rumpled travel wear andlives out of two duffel bags and a wheeledsuitcase, never spends more than a few hun-dred dollars on any one of his myriad projects.“For people who live on a dollar or less aday,” he explains, “even 50 or a hundred dol-lars can make a huge difference.”

FOR MANY CONVERTS TO THEcause of grassroots philanthropy,there’s a single incident, a touching

encounter, a moment of clarity, which setsthem on a course to help others. For Gold thatepiphany came in 1989.

During a trip as a tourist to the Himalayanhill station of Darjeeling in India, he met ayoung Tibetan refugee, who invited him to hishome. In the tumbledown little shack, Goldsaw the man’s wife constantly touching herears while grimacing with pain. He realizedshe was suffering from a potentially deadly earinfection. He found her a doctor and paid forantibiotics, which cost just $1. A further $30got her a hearing aid. The young woman wasecstatic at being able to hear again.

“I’d thought you had to be rich to do suchthings,” Gold recalls. “I realized I had thepower to help change people’s lives. It waslike being Superman and not knowing youcould fly.”

On returning home, Gold got in touch with

one hundred of his friends and asked them forsmall donations. Before long, he was back inIndia with $2,200. He then set up a non-profitcharity and called it 100 Friends. Two decadeson, 100 Friends has several thousand membersworldwide, many of them Jewish. “You haveto give them credit,” Gold quips. “The idea ofcheap Jews is an unfair stereotype.”

Last year Gold raised $200,000 for thedozens of projects and individuals he is spon-soring at any one time across South andSoutheast Asia. While he’s on the road, hekeeps in touch with his backers and protégésvia his portable office: a laptop, a digital cam-era, and a cell phone.

Unlike international aid agencies that doleout assistance in bulk (often with plenty ofwaste along the way), Gold zeroes in on theneediest individuals he encounters during hissojourns. He does so by performing both ran-dom and preplanned acts of kindness. Throughhis spider’s web of contacts across the region,Gold homes in on orphanages, rural schools,hospitals, women’s shelters and old-agehomes in search of those most in need of help.

“He focuses on the bang for the buck,” saysShon Pistoll, a musician from Philadelphia,who accompanied Gold on his recent six-weektrip to India, Gold’s 13th visit to the subconti-nent. “A donation goes straight from his handto the hands of people who need it most.”

YOU COULD POINT RANDOMLYanywhere on a map of Southeast Asia,and chances are Gold has already

made a difference in some lives. His mission,he says, is to “enable people to support them-selves and regain their dignity.”

The island of Sulawesi in Indonesia: theAmerican Jew gave an elderly Muslim manliving off a garbage dump some seed moneyso he could start a small convenience shop.

Banda Aceh on the island of Sumatra,Indonesia: Gold bought nets and other essen-tials for fishermen who had lost their liveli-hoods in the devastating Indian Ocean tsuna-mi in December 2004 so they could set sailagain for new catch.

Nepal: Gold is sponsoring 150 younggirls, at the price of a goat each, to keep themfrom being hired out into bonded slavery bytheir parents or lured into prostitution by

THE JERUSALEM REPORT JULY 4, 2011 27

‘Marc doesn’t own a home or rent anapartment. He’sconstantly traveling [and is] genuinely sincerein what he does. The word mensch comes to mind.’

– Mark Josephs

TIBOR KRAUSZ

THE JERUSALEM REPORT JULY 4, 2011 29

JEWISH WORLD

unscrupulous traffickers.Kabul, Afghanistan: Gold bought sewing

machines for battered women at a shelter; pur-chased pots and jars for a poor widow withthree children so she could make and sell chut-ney for a living; and bought a cart for a badlyscarred woman so she could launch a smallbusiness selling vegetables.

“Marc is like a one-man battalion of tikkunolam [repairing the world],” says Judi Leff,director of Special Projects at the ReformJewish Congregation Emanu-El in SanFrancisco, who has organized severalfundraisers for Gold’s projects. “He sees solu-tions as fast as he sees problems. His approachis one of cooperation and empowerment, notof Western paternalism.”

Gold’s approach also blends earthly prag-matism with clownish mischief. Within thespace of a few minutes he can go fromexpounding on the views of the AmericanJewish “existentialist psychotherapist” IrvinD. Yalon to accosting random passersby play-fully with a mechanical singing carp that wiggles its tail and belts out BobbyMcFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”“I’m sure to many people [in remote ruralareas] I must look like someone from outerspace,” he concedes.

Others see him as a savior. “Marc has savedme and my family,” says Lhamo, a youngTibetan woman who first met Gold by chancea few years ago near her hometown in China’svast hinterland. “If not for him, I would havespent my whole life [in poverty] on a farm.”Instead, thanks to Gold, Lhamo has completeda two-year college program in China and nextSeptember she will continue her studies on ascholarship in California. Her younger brother,too, is back in school. “Marc encourages me tostudy hard. He’s been like a father to me,”Lhamo adds.

Everywhere Gold goes, he makes a point ofhelping the sick by paying for the treatment ofthose who can’t afford it. In Vietnam he’s foot-ed the bill for a lifesaving heart surgery for agirl and leukemia treatment for another. InBurma he’s restored sight to an elderly manwith severe cataracts by paying for his treat-ment. In Bali he’s financed restorative surgeriesfor children with cleft palates.

A few years ago in Ladakh in northernIndia, Gold stumbled (almost literally) upon a94-year-old Tibetan woman shivering, hungryand frostbitten, in a dark basement. He put herup with a local family for $300 a year, whichhelped her spend the last two years of her lifein comfort. “Come on, that could be yourgrandma!” Gold says.

“Marc is able to do very big things withvery little money,” notes Mark Josephs, a song-writer-guitarist who is a childhood friend ofGold and a longtime supporter of his work.“There’s no 100 Friends office building andMarc doesn’t own a home or rent an apartment.He’s constantly traveling. If I didn’t know him,I may be reluctant to contribute to [a charitylike his], but Marc is genuinely sincere in whathe does. The word mensch comes to mind.”

But Gold rejects the label of saintly do-gooder. “I don’t pat myself on the back fordoing this. I love traveling and I love helpingpeople – it’s a chicken-and-egg thing. I do itbecause it’s interesting and fun,” he says.

And he clearly enjoys basking in the role ofsavior. Many of his prized photographs featurehim beaming beside needy souls he’s helped.“Marc loves to hog the limelight,” notes aBritish woman, who runs her own charity pro-gram in Thailand. “At times he can seem like abit of a show-off.”

GROWING UP IN ATLANTIC City’s Jewish community in NewJersey, Gold learned the importance

of tzedaka [charity] at his father’s knee. AlbertGold, a photographer, donated proceeds fromhis pictures to charity and often took youngMarc to Jewish old-age homes to spend timewith lonelier residents. “Every few monthsmy father would bring home a homelessman,” Gold recalls. “He would give the man abath, a nice dinner, a new set of clothes and afew dollars. He really taught me empathy andthe value of doing mitzvot.”

Albert Gold also instilled in his son anoth-er one of his passions: an abiding interest inforeign lands and cultures. From age six Marcbegan perusing his father’s vast collection ofNational Geographic magazines and begandreaming of traveling to distant countries.Soon after his father died and when theyounger Gold was 14, he hit the road, travel-ing all around the US. He dropped out ofschool and became a hippie. “I had a choicebetween LSD and algebra,” he notes. Hechose the former.

In those heady days of the flower-powerrevolution, Gold wore a shirt fashioned froman American flag and let his hair grow incurly ringlets. (“All gone now,” he laments.)He joined a commune, learned to play thesitar, and dabbled in various forms of easternmysticism seeking to attain “Buddha nature,”the feeling of being as one with the world. “Ifollowed a very Jewish path,” he offers, “inthe sense that I was searching for some deep-er meaning to life.”

Failing to reach enlightenment, he returnedto school. He went on to graduate with a mas-ter’s in psychology from the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, in 1979. Two years pre-viously Gold was voted “Teacher of the Year”at a part black, part Puerto Rican publicschool in New York’s Harlem, where he hadbeen working as a teacher. He received theaward from Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr., theslain civil rights activist’s father.

On the side, Gold also produced a radioprogram on “world music” for WBAI in NewYork and became a rare foreign follower ofthe teachings of the Turkish Sufi order ofWhirling Dervishes, spending weeks inIstanbul with the sect’s inner circle. In themid-1980s, restless for new challenges, hebegan studying behavioral medicine andbecame the head of the first AIDS counselingand testing program in San Francisco’s gaycommunity, an epicenter of the HIV epidem-ic. “Twenty percent of my staff died within ayear,” he remembers. “I got burned out in theend – so much death.”

And the sense of having found a higherpurpose was still eluding him. Then came thatmoment of revelation in Darjeeling.

Instead of trying to find meaning in esotericreligious teachings, New Age fads, scientificbooks, and psychotherapy as he had beendoing for years, Gold finally found his callingin helping people in some of the world’s poor-est countries. “Saving a woman’s life for theprice of a candy bar has kept me focused andoccupied for the past 22 years,” Gold says.

As a bonus, he is now unencumbered bythe daily grind of earning a living or payingoff a mortgage; instead, he can enjoy thespontaneity and excitement of open-endedtravel. “I’m free and I don’t need much,” Goldsays. Sometimes night finds him beddingdown on the floor of a Tibetan mud house orsomewhere on a charpoy in India.

In some ways his itinerant micro-charitywork has allowed Gold to turn back into thefootloose hippie he once was. He isn’t averseto lighting up on an opium pipe or on a jointif offered one during his travels, and doesn’tshy away from Age of Aquarius wisdom byuttering sentences like “I had the image of thehealing circle traveling around the world.”

For Gold, who professes to be an atheist,helping the poor has become a quasi-spiritualexperience. “It’s the look on people’s facesafter you help them – that look of gratitude,”he says. “You can be jaded and cynical abouta lot of things, but that look is pure.”

He then exclaims: “It’s a [expletive] greatexperience, are you kidding!” •