Question: What is almsgiving (Tzedakah) in the spiritual sense? Is it the same as in the material world?
Answer: I don’t know what charity is in the material world. Twenty times a day someone knocks on my door asking for charity. Should I give? It is unpleasant and embarrassing not to give since everyone gives.
There are various calculations. A person thinks: perhaps it is worthwhile, because I will receive satisfaction from the fact that I gave. And sometimes it is done without any such calculation, simply because I received an upbringing that obligates me to act this way, and so I give. This too is a kind of calculation: If I do not act as I was educated to act, I will feel bad. In other words, it is a habit. That is what almsgiving in the material world.
In spirituality, charity is when you are able to give something that belongs to you without any payment whatsoever. That is, if you make all the possible calculations and it is clear to you that you will receive absolutely nothing from it, will you still have the strength to give? Where would that strength come from? We know that any action performed by the desire to receive requires “fuel.” And this “fuel” makes it possible to perform the action. Such is the nature of our desire to receive.
Imagine a machine that will not budge unless you insert a token. Here we are talking about a scenario where I give it absolutely nothing, and yet it can move. This is a completely imaginary thing, impossible to realize.
Yet we are told that it can be done. And the fact that you cannot receive anything in return means that the desire that performs this action truly receives nothing; otherwise, it would not be charity, but buying and selling.
I give a beggar five shekels in charity so that I will be healthy, so that I will attain the future world, so that things will go well for me, and so that I will feel satisfaction from having made a donation today. People get onto a bus and put a shekel into a charity box so that the bus will not explode.
Is that called charity? It is simply payment to the upper force so that it will protect me, as though I were saying to the Creator: “Look, I made a donation, and now, while I am riding this bus, make sure that nothing happens.” That is a contract, not a donation.
Of course, the vessels of reception receive nothing; only the vessels of bestowal receive. In other words, I must acquire a special correction called the “desire to bestow” within which I receive a return, compensation, for having given charity. And this must serve as the “fuel,” because without it I would not be able to give charity.
That is, in reality there is no action that I can perform without receiving some form of return or reward. Only compensation that enters the desire to receive is called animalistic, material, for the sake of reception, and not spiritual.
But if I am able to give and receive compensation within the desire to bestow, then it is considered that I am performing an act for the sake of bestowal, giving charity, that is, receiving nothing in return.
Nevertheless, I do receive strength a form of strength, a return, within the desire to bestow. But the “fuel” that I receive there serves the very same purpose for which I gave the charity. This “fuel” provided me with the strength to give charity.
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From the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 6/9/26, Rabash, “Man Is Rewarded with Righteousness and Peace through the Torah”
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Bestowal
For the Sake of Bestowal
Donating And Spirituality
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