An Avot Mishnah for Shabbat (Parashat Ki Tavo)
This week’s perakim are Perek 3 and Perek 4. The
following piece discusses a mishnah from Perek 3.
The importance of tzedakah (charity) within the life
of every Jew is fundamental. Embedded in Tanach and in midrash, it needs no
proof texts here. But how far should one go in performing acts of charity? At
Avot 3:8 Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota sets the scene by suggesting that there is no
possession in our hands that we can ringfence or regard as sacrosanct, and exempt
from the mitzvah of tzedakah, since whatever we have we hold as trustees
of God:
תֶּן לוֹ מִשֶּׁלּוֹ, שֶׁאַתָּה וְשֶׁלָּךְ שֶׁלּוֹ.
וְכֵן בְּדָוִד הוּא אוֹמֵר: כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַֽנּוּ לָךְ
Give Him what is His, for you,
and whatever is yours, are His. As David says: "For everything comes from
You, and from Your own hand we give to You" (I Divrei Hayomim 29:14).
Here Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota is only telling us not to be
too fond of our worldly goods. Elsewhere in Avot, at 5:13, we learn that a
person who says “what’s mine is yours; what’s yours is yours” is a chasid—someone
whose kindness exceeds the usual norm. The two mishnayot operate in different
spheres: one speaks to a person’s relationship with God, the other to that
person’s relationship with other people. It is possible to agree with Rabbi
Elazar Ish Bartota that everything comes from God, yet focus one’s generosity
on inanimate objectts such as the purchase of books or the procurement of a
Sefer Torah, while contributing to neither public causes such as food kitchens
for the poor, nor to the needs of individuals.
In life we can and do learn not just from what people say
but from what they do. The Talmud supplies us with evidence that Rabbi Elazar
Ish Bartota—who was not a wealthy man—was committed to helping his fellow
humans. At Ta’anit 24a we learn how he was so generous with his assets that
even the charity collectors would hide when they saw him coming.
As a contemporary slant on this ancient teaching, R’ Yisroel
Miller (The Wisdom of Avos) adds a practical note:
“We live in an age of
generational decline and verbal inflation. Whereas the term “mesirus nefesh”
used to mean literally sacrificing life itself for Hashem (e.g. choosing death
rather than worship idols), today the term is commonly used to praise anyone
who gives up much time and comfort for Torah and mitzvos. Praiseworthy as such
sacrifices are, Rabbi Elazar is saying that is can be made easier if we develop
the attitude that ‘sacrifice’ is not actually sacrificing anything at all.
Imagine someone who truly thinks
of their own bank account as belonging totally to Hashem. The Divine Owner
graciously allows him to take whatever he needs, but asks him to generously
distribute a portion to other needy people as well. With that attitude, giving
tzedakah is not a ‘sacrifice’ but a naturally pleasant activity.
Such attitudes are not easy to
develop, but many people adopt the stratagem of putting a percentage of every
paycheck into a separate tzedakah account. Once deposited, it is no longer seen
as ‘mine’ and is much easier to give away wholeheartedly”.
The fact that so many people today run charity accounts is a
positive endorsement of the wisdom of R’ Miller’s words—though a cynic might
comment that these charity accounts are generally tax-efficient, which makes it
even easier to give one’s money away wholeheartedly.
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