#tzedaka

Help preserve one of Budapest’s oldest Jewish cemetery!

We’ll create an illustrated zine, host free workshops & guided tours to celebrate its unique art, history & heritage—reviving a neglected treasure of culture, memory & community.

This campaign is still active and fundraising for the next 5 days or so - please donate and/or boost if you can.

Giving Tzedakah before Shabbat.

He is acting out the very words written behind him. They say, loosely translated, that being a mentsch (Yiddish for a “good” person) comes before keeping the Torah.

וְכָל תְּרוּמָה לְכָל קָדְשֵׁי בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יַקְרִיבוּ לַכֹּהֵן לוֹ יִהְיֶה (במדבר ה, ט) EVERY RAISED-OFFERING OF ALL THE HOLY THINGS THAT THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL BRING TO THE KOHEN, IT SHALL BE HIS. (BAMIDBAR 5:9) 

Rashi explains that this verse teaches us that the bikkurim are given to the kohen. Elsewhere (Shemos 23:19), the Torah instructs us to bring bikkurim, the first fruits of the season, to the Beis Hamikdash, the Holy Temple, but does not state what shall be done with the fruit afterward. The Torah tells us now, “to the kohen, it shall be his”—the bikkurim are divided among the kohanim.

The Torah’s portrayal of bikkurim as a two-step process, first requiring us to bring the new fruits to the Beis Hamikdash and then instructing us to leave them for the kohanim, teaches us the approach we should adopt when it comes to giving tzedakah.

Bikkurim must be brought from fruits of the highest quality (see Rambam, Laws of Bikkurim 2:3), whose cultivation requires great effort and patience. The mitzvah to bring the very first of these fruits to the Temple demonstrates that when we chance upon an opportunity to give to charity, we must not hesitate to part with it as we consider how difficult it was for us to earn. Rather, we should readily give the first and finest of our earnings to a G-dly purpose—tzedakah.

The ultimate challenge, however, is not in contributing toward a holy or communal cause, but in giving the first of our earnings to the poor, for their personal benefit. One can rightfully argue, why is the next person more entitled to the first fruits of my labor than I am? I, too, am needy and deserving!

The mitzvah of bikkurim shows us how to surmount this inner struggle: by bringing the new fruits to the Temple before giving them to the kohen. Figuratively, this means to regard the first of our earnings as funds that already belong to charity. The process begins with “bringing the fruits to the Temple,” because the struggle of parting with our hard-earned money in favor of giving it to someone else exists only so long as we are parting with our possessions. Once we regard the funds as belonging to charity, giving them away becomes much easier.