A widow once came to the Prophet
Elisha in tears. Her husband had died
leaving her not only penniless, but in great debt. Her creditor had seized her children as
servants and she was at her wits’ end as to where to turn or what to do to
alleviate her tragic plight.
“Tell me,” said the prophet, “what have
you in the house?”
“I have nothing but one jar of oil,”
replied the poor lady.
“Then go to your neighbours’ homes and
ask to borrow all the vessels they have, large and small,” Elisha instructed
her. The widow set out immediately and
gathered the utensils, cups and bowls, pots and pans, jugs and jars, laying
them out across her bare floor.
“Now take your lone jar of oil and
pour it into the vessels you see before you,” said the prophet. The woman did so and filled up the first pot
from the oil in the jar. Miraculously,
however, out from a tiny jar, enough oil came to fill the large pot.
“Don’t stop now,” said Elisha, and
he motioned to her to continue to pour out oil from the jar. The woman took the jar and poured oil into
each of the vessels sitting before them, until each one was filled. When the last teacup was full, she looked and
saw that her jar was finally empty.
“Now, go and sell the oil to redeem
your children,” said the prophet to the relieved lady, “and you and your
children will have more than enough to live on for many years to come.”
בַּר קַפָּרָא הֲוָה
מְזַבֵּן מִילֵּי בְּדִינָרֵי: עַד דְּכָפְנַתְּ — אֱכוֹל. עַד דְּצָחֵית —
שְׁתִי, עַד דְּרָתְחָא קִדְרָךָ — שְׁפוֹךְ. קַרְנָא קָרְיָא בְּרוֹמִי, בַּר
מְזַבֵּין תְּאֵנֵי, תְּאֵנֵי דַּאֲבוּךְ זַבֵּין
Bar Kappara, a professional
speechwriter, once quipped: If you are hungry, eat! If you are thirsty, drink! While the pot is still boiling, pour it out! When the horn sounds in Rome, son of the fig
seller, sell your father’s figs!
Anyone who has ever tried to lose
weight will tell you that the trick is to outlast the hunger pangs. At first, they can be overbearing. But if you ignore them, they dissipate. Slowly but surely, you find yourself able to
subsist on less food consumption, because you didn’t allow yourself to respond
to the first signs of hunger. With time,
as you eat less, weight loss follows.
Analogously, explains the Anaf
Yosef, Bar Kappara is offering advice for success in this world and the World
to Come. In order to achieve success,
you need to be hungry (or thirsty). Hashem
has instilled within us an appetite for prosperity. But if you suppress your hunger, eventually
you’ll get used to your situation, and you won’t be hungry anymore. The more you suppress your appetite for
success, the less you’ll feel the need to achieve success.
But that’s not what our Father in
Heaven desires. He wants you to act on
your hunger, to fill your appetite and quench your thirst. In tandem with spiritual prosperity, Judaism values
material prosperity. Bar Kappara’s
advice is, ‘If you are hungry, eat!’
When you feel motivated by the natural human drive to be ambitious,
embrace it. If you’re feeling materially
hungry, it’s your Father gently encouraging you to seek success in this world.
Likewise, ‘If you are thirsty,
drink!’ When the Prophet Isaiah calls
upon “all who are thirsty, come to drink,” he is not talking about physical
water. He is exhorting the people to drink in thirstily the words of the Torah,
which is compared to water. Just like
water flows from a high to a low place, so too the Torah came from Heaven and
flowed down into this world. When we
embrace our thirst for Torah, we achieve prosperity in the World to Come.
Next, Bar Kappara instructs us to
pour out the water while it is still boiling.
In this piece of advice, he cautions against the prevalent misconception
that we should wait until peak prosperity to share our wealth with others. If you push off giving tzedakah (charity)
until the pot is fully cooked, by the time you’re ready to give, the pot will
be in its cooling-off stage and you’ll feel that you no longer have the
wherewithal to provide for others.
Giving tzedakah is like saving for
retirement. You need to start
apportioning funds towards these two endeavours as early as possible in your
career. Very few people actually reach a
point when they feel that they have ‘extra’ money to put aside or give
away. These allocations should not be viewed
as discretionary spending. The right
attitude is to build retirement saving and charitable giving into one’s budget
as a fixed cost. You must give while the
pot is still boiling. When the food is
fully cooked – when you reach the end of your career, and you are on a fixed
income, it will become even more difficult to part with your money.
The same is true of your spiritual ‘giving.’ If you push off your spiritual munificence until
you feel ready to give, you’ll never get there.
Spiritual giving means community volunteering. It means helping individuals in need, such as
life coaching a young person or helping an older person with their shopping or
doctor visits. Or it might mean a weekly
chavrusa (study partnership) with someone less knowledgeable than you in
Torah. You might think, ‘How can I take
time to learn with this other person, when I still have so much to learn
myself?’ Bar Kappara insists that the
right time to ‘pour out’ is when the pot is still reaching its boiling point.
And finally, Bar Kappara advises
the son of the fig-man to sell his figs as soon as he hears the trumpet sound, without
waiting for permission from his father. As
children, we are completely reliant upon our parents. Practically speaking, that means that we are
complete takers, giving nothing back to them in return. Not only do we give nothing to them, we
likewise give nothing to the world. When
babies cry, they expect their parents to give them what they need and
want. Because that’s the nature of
takers in this world.
As we mature, the hope is that we progressively
move along the spectrum from takers to givers.
When we get married, for the first time we are called upon to completely
give of ourselves to another person. Your
spouse is the person you’ve chosen to devote all your resources to, from the
material to the emotional, psychological, physical, and spiritual. The secret to a happy marriage is to expect
nothing in return. When your spouse does
indeed love you back, it should feel like a bonus.
And right or wrong, most people do
anticipate that their spouses will respond with like-mannered devotion and
dedication. When we have kids, however,
our ability to give selflessly is truly tested.
When we give to our children, we have no expectation whatsoever of a
reciprocal arrangement. We give and expect
nothing in return. That’s the ultimate
mature condition. And it’s that
commitment to wholly beneficent giving that we should carry into the charitable
arena generally. We give because we want
to be net-givers to this world, not because there’s anything in it for us. That should be our attitude towards both material
giving and spiritual giving.
When he tells the son of the
fig-man to sell the figs, that’s what Bar Kappara means. The son doesn’t need to wait for his father’s
permission to try his hand at business.
The father receives the ultimate pleasure and satisfaction when he sees
his son cut the proverbial umbilical cord.
If he’s able to make decisions independently, and make money without the
father’s constant involvement, the father is content. The first step towards becoming a net-giver
in life is to take responsibility and ownership for one’s actions and
decisions.
If that’s true of a mortal parent,
it’s certainly the case regarding our Father in Heaven’s hopes and dreams for
us. In fact, the Almighty provides us
with an inkling of His capacity to give, in order that we should follow in His
footsteps. God’s giving is unlimited and
that’s the perspective He wants us to strive for. Where do we see Hashem’s
capacity to give in an infinite capacity?
Concerning Torah wisdom, King
Solomon writes (Proverbs 3:14), “Its trade value is better than silver and its
yield is greater than gold.” Any
business transaction involves one party exchanging goods with another, with the
total value remaining the same. By contrast, explains Rashi, when one says to
their friend, ‘Teach me a chapter, and I’ll teach you a chapter,’ they now each
have both teachings.
Torah wisdom, and wisdom generally,
are so much more powerful than earthly treasures. Wisdom is limitless. You can share the same piece of wisdom with any
number of people. Not only will you make
each of them richer, but by listening to their wisdom in return, you become
richer and richer with every person you meet!
That’s the gift of unlimited giving we’ve received from our Father in
Heaven.
But in reality, when you believe
that all your material assets come from the Almighty’s bounty, you realize that
just as His treasury is unlimited, so is your capacity to give to others. The more you give, the more He will replenish
your storehouse. Think of your hot water
boiler. When you turn on the tap, new
water immediately enters from the other end to fill the void created by your
act of releasing the water. That’s how
the Almighty’s bounty works: the more you give, the more He provides you with
the capacity to give.
Just like the oil that flowed from
the jar of the widow who turned to the Prophet Elisha in desperation, our
Father in Heaven is not limited by the size of our physical vessels. It may appear that your jars are small and
holding a limited quantity of oil, but that doesn’t stop the Almighty’s ability
to make that oil go much further than you could ever have imagined. Just think about the oil on Chanukah –
naturally, it should have lasted only one day.
But God doesn’t work according to the rules of nature.
Any person who has been blessed
with children will tell you that the birth of their second did not at all diminish
their ability to love the firstborn. Rav
Dessler teaches that the word for ‘love’ in Hebrew is ‘ahava’ is related to the
root word ‘hav’, meaning ‘give’ in Aramaic.
Our capacity to love is unlimited and, as children of the Divine, our
capacity to give is likewise unlimited. We feel it organically with our children. The challenge in life is to take that same
capacity for unlimited love and share our generosity with as many of God’s
children as we can.
Hashem created this world to give
of His bounty to His children. His
greatest pleasure is to see you jump at the sound of the horn and sell His
figs, by following His ways of unlimited love.
May you progress quickly from being a net-taker to becoming a net-giver
and realize your Divine power to apportion His love infinitely!
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