Parashat Re’eh: Giving and Relatedness
Delivered by Student Rabbi Maayan Lev on August, 6, 2021
Shabbat shalom everyone. For those who don’t know me, my name is Maayan Lev, and I am Am HaYam’s rabbinic intern. I work with Rabbi Sacks. This is my first time in the building, and I am so happy to be with you all, in person, this Shabbat.
I look forward to getting to know you all over the course of the coming months.
This week’s Torah portion is Re’eh, and it is quite rich. It opens with G!d promising a blessing if the commandments are followed, and a curse if they are not. That is the very first line of the parashah. Certainly, the masters who divided the Torah into sections knew how to open with the dramatic.
The portion also speaks about the establishment of the holy Temple in Jerusalem, a repetition of some kosher food laws, and punishment for false prophets. It also has some important lines about the freeing of slaves after six years of service. The Torah portion concludes with the laws regarding the three pilgrimage holidays: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. But I am not going to talk about any of those things tonight.
Tonight, I want to talk about charity.
This Torah portion devotes much space to laws about tithing: how much money to give, when it should be given, and where the money should be directed to. Though tithing is not a traditional Jewish practice in modern America, we are all taught to give generously. For many, charity is an essential tenet of Judaism, and it is among the most commonly cited mitzvot, good deeds. But why do we give? And if we only give because we are commanded to, is it really giving, or it is more like an obligation or tax?
Surely you don’t need to be religious to give to others. There are plenty of non-religious people who give to charitable causes, and I am sure there are also some Jews who do not give as they should. But no matter the religious affiliation of the masses, poverty has persisted throughout history. And there is no clear answer in sight for how to solve it. There are some who might say: “if humans can’t solve the issue of poverty, G!d can.”
“Not gonna happen,” asserts the Torah.
That’s right. This week’s Torah portion actually says something quite unpleasant about the future of poverty. Deuteronomy 15:11 declares: “There will never cease to be poor people in the land.”
I will repeat that again: “There will never cease to be poor people in the land.”
It seems hopeless, then. Nevertheless, the verse continues, “Therefore, I command you to surely open your hand to your poor and needy brother.” Why? Why give if the problem will not go away? Doesn’t that mean that our money is going to be wasted on these people? If there will always be poor people, why continue to give?
The easy answer is: because G!d said so. For many people though, both religious and non-religious, this is not a satisfying answer. Some would say that we give simply because we know in our hearts that it is the right thing to do. The famous medieval rabbi Rashi[1] echoes this sentiment. He explained this Torah verse: “G!d asks us to give for our own benefit.”
There are words in this explanation that he implies, though he has left them out. I am now going to put them back in, making Rashi’s statement read, “G!d asks us to give for our benefit, not for theirs.”
It might not surprise you to hear this, but it bears repeating. It feels good to give! It’s good for our psyche. Good for our soul!
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once stated, “The surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.”
MLK was a man of faith, not a social scientist, but science clearly backs up his words. In a study recently reported by Forbes, researchers gave drivers a few quarters each and told them to use the money to either feed their own parking meter, or another car’s. Those who paid for another car’s parking reportedly felt considerably happier afterwards than those who spent the money on their own parking meter.
The explanation given for these results was that humans have a psychological need to feel close to others. They call this feeling “relatedness.”
When we attempt to make another person happy, even if we don’t know them, we establish a connection to them, consciously or not. Their happiness then becomes our happiness, a much more powerful happiness than we would experience if we chose only to help ourselves. This explains why people who choose to give back through time and labor may feel more fulfilled than those who choose to give back only through money. Giving time to a cause requires more human interaction, which allows us to put a face to the cause we are working for, in turn making us care for the cause even more.
I want to close with something that my grandfather, Marshall Goldman, taught me. When my grandfather drove me around town as a child, he always gave cash to the needy people alongside freeway exits. As a child, this just seemed like the right thing to do, and I admired him for it. Later, as a teenager, I asked him, “Grandpa, you don’t know how these people are going to use your money? Established organizations in the community can distribute your money a lot more efficiently than you can. Why don’t you donate to THEM instead?”
“I do,” my grandpa told me. “But I also make sure to donate to the people I meet face to face. They might not always use my money well, but it’s important for them to see people who care.”
My grandpa’s lesson has stayed with me to this day.
Giving to the poor is not a pointless cause. It doesn’t just help us. It helps them, too! Despite what society tells us, it is indeed possible to be both poor AND happy.
To this day, I still give money to people at freeway exits. Sure, needy people could get benefits from organization representatives who help hundreds or thousands of people at once, but it’s a special moment when a person in need receives money directly from the source, from the giver. Even if I never see that person again, when I give that person money, our eyes meet, if only for a moment, and a bond is formed. That bond says, “I care about you,” and “we’re not so different from each other.” Such sentiment can give the poor hope, and determination to carry on.
As the Torah states, we might not be able to eliminate poverty in our lifetime, but remember, it still commands us to give. Giving to the poor may not solve all of their problems, but it can still create moments of joy. Mutual moments of joy, even. Relatedness. So we continue to give, in whatever way we think is best. We provide love and hope, and love and hope are what keep the world running. And if that is not a worthy cause, I don’t know what is.
Shabbat Shalom
[1] Rashi is the acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (1040-1105). He lived in France. His commentaries, especially on the Torah and the Talmud, are universally studied even today.