I Give Because I’m Returning A Loan

I have a funny answer. I give because I believe it is not mine to begin with.

There’s a verse from Torah I think about often: “You shouldn’t pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you need to leave it for the poor and the stranger” (Lev.19).

In other words, if you forget something in your field, leave it. Someone else needs it more than you do.

It’s a teaching about giving, one that works on a few levels. On the first level, my teacher Rabbi Eddie Feinstein says, “You don’t want to hoard everything that has been entrusted to you, you don’t want to be that guy, the one who is up at night wondering about the one grape, the one drop of olive oil he missed. So don’t pick your vineyard bare. Let some be. Leave some for the stranger, for someone else.”

But the Hebrew commentary Sefer Ha Chinukh teaches that we should leave the forgotten pieces not so much to help the poor — because, let’s be honest, who really could subsist on a few forgotten grapes — but in order to help ourselves. We leave a few things behind to remind us that none of this field actually “ours” to begin with. The field is a gift, lent to us so we might use it well and distribute it wisely.

In other words, we don’t own the orchard, the food, the money. It is simply not ours. We are the caretakers, but ultimately it all belongs to God (or you can say ‘the universe’).

This is very different from how giving is often portrayed. I don’t give because I’m good and holy, or even because it’s my responsibility. I’m just returning something that was on loan.

I might have started approaching this question by thinking that the “plenty,” the lush fields and vineyards are mine, and the problem of feeding the hungry belongs to someone else. But really, I believe the only things that belong to me (and you) are the larger, thornier questions of how we’re going to feed those people who need food. How we’re going to raise up those who are enslaved economically or politically. So what’s really mine? According to my tradition, society’s woes. It is my obligation to see those problems as my belongings. Is that a burden? Yes. But it is not just mine. I believe we all share the weight.

So I regularly return some of what is in my care. I’ll admit that it is never wholly comfortable. It can be scary to take what could be put aside for my family and offer it to strangers.

But here’s where I lean on my tradition. I don’t have to be one hundred percent ecstatic and intentional about every act of giving; Judaism just asks me to do it. There are specific rules and tested ways. So I take my cues from the teachers who came before me and don’t try to reinvent this particular wheel. I realize this means that I am not particularly creative or clever in the giving department. But if I’m honest, I find it’s hard enough to simply give as often as I’m supposed to and donate all that is required.