The Daily Chizzuk by our Rebbe Rav Eliezer Berland shlit”a – The Tzaddikim would distribute everything to charity
Wednesday, 25 Sivan 5783
These are his holy words:
Now I heard a question: Why is it not written about charity: If you give charity, you will receive 10 times the amount, like it is written about the Sabbatical year, that if you decide not to work, you will receive three times [the crop] in the sixth, seventh, and eighth year?!
A person gives a hundred dollars to charity, he will receive a thousand dollars. Anyone who distributes charity sees this first-hand. You give charity, give the last hundred dollars – how will you return home?!
You gave a hundred dollars – someone came and gave you exactly a thousand dollars! You gave the hundred dollars collected for wedding expenses, they told you that the match is called off. You gave your last hundred dollars. After this, you come home without food.
Like the Gemara relates in Ta’anit (24a) about Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota who would regularly distribute his money to charity, and once they gave him a large sum of money to buy [a dowry] for his daughter’s wedding, [and he gave it away to charity for a wedding of orphans].
His family told him: There are things which you could buy for the daughter’s wedding. We have a bride – buy something for the wedding. There’s a hinah [an event that is held the night before a wedding in some Middle Eastern communities] now. Buy something for the hinah. But something for the Sheva Brachot. In the end, he comes home and he doesn’t have a penny. He comes home with a sack of flour which he bought for his daughter’s wedding.
A thousand people are coming to the wedding. He needs to bring a ton of flour. Well, in the end, after he distributed all the money to charity, a perutah is left, two perutot. With this, he bought a sack of a half-kilogram of flour. How will he enter his house with a half-kilogram? He needs to come with a wagonload of sacks!
The granary is a giant hangar, a giant storage facility that can hold several tons. Well, he puts the half-kilogram in the granary and enters his home. The family asks him: You received a thousand dollars – where is what you brought?
He answers: Everything is in the granary! Everything is in the granary?
Then the daughter – the bride – arrives and asks, “Aba, did you bring something?” The mother answers: Aba is fooling us. He says everything is in the granary. Go and search in the granary. What should we look for in the granary? Aba doesn’t have a thing, so he tells us to search in the granary.
Fine. The daughter goes to open up the granary in order to see, in any case, what he brought. Maybe he brought a few oranges, a few plums, a few dates, but it’s impossible to open up the granary. It’s impossible to open; someone is standing there inside and isn’t allowing it to be opened.
She tries to push the door but it doesn’t work. It’s impossible – the door needs to be broken, because the granary became filled with wheat. The whole granary became filled until the ceiling, and all the wheat is blocking the door. It’s impossible to open the door because of so much wheat.
His wife says to him: Moshe, what have you brought? You brought here a granary full of wheat!
He says to them – immediately when it was revealed that the granary was full – a vow that all this wheat will be distributed immediately to charity, and our daughter doesn’t have any more [in it] than all the other poor people.
The Tzaddikim would distribute everything to charity.
So all that we’re talking about is that the greatest heresy is what is in Parashat Behar; the question “What will we eat” is the greatest heresy.
What is the meaning of, “You ask: ‘What will we eat?’” Here Hashem says, “I will give you oranges in abundance, tomatoes in abundance, eggplant in abundance, and everything will grow and blossom. And you will have even more – you will have abundance until the ninth year: “Until the ninth year, until the arrival of its crop, you will eat the old” (Vayikra 25:22). Until the ninth year, you will eat from the Sabbatical year [produce]. The Sabbatical will give you such abundance that it will be enough also for the eight year and also the ninth year.
The “Kli Yakar” says that the Sabbatical year brings abundance to all six years, not only the ninth year. This is also the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth years. And the next Sabbatical year has new bounty. The bounty will be enough for seven years, also to the eighth year, and also to the ninth year, and so on and so forth.
A person gives a hundred dollar to charity, and he doesn’t know how he will return home. This is his last hundred dollars. His wife told him, “Do the shopping for Shabbat,” but within five minutes, someone came and gave him a thousand dollars. A person can see this first-hand – “Bring all the tithes into the storage house, and let it be sustenance in My Temple. Test Me, if you will, with this, says Hashem, Master of Legions, [see] if I do not open up for you the windows of the heavens and pour out upon you blessing without end” (Malachi 3:10) – the tithe is the only thing with which it’s permissible to test Hashem.
So we asked, let Hashem say: If you give charity, you will receive ten times the amount, twenty times – why only in the Sabbatical year, we’re told that it is for three years?!
Because the whole task of the Sabbatical year is the greatest test of all tests.
Therefore, we always read this before the Shavuot holiday. It’s written, “The strong warriors, who do His bidding” (Tehilim 103:20) – this is only about the Sabbatical year; these are the farmers, who sacrifice their souls.
