By Rabbi Rav Marco Del Monte
In Parashat Re'eh the Torah commands us: "If there is among you a needy person... you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand against your needy brother, but you shall open your hand to him" (Deuteronomy 15:7-8). From this fundamental precept opens a vision that goes far beyond the commonly understood concept of charity.
Tzedakah in fact describes a deeper dynamic, in which the material and spiritual worlds meet: what happens down here produces an effect in the upper worlds and, at the same time, what comes from Above finds in human action its own instrument to manifest itself in the world. Already the Hebrew language, the instrument through which the world was created, seems to suggest something extraordinary to us. The verb natan (נתנ), "to give", is a palindrome: it can be read in both directions. Almost as if to teach us that the movement of giving is never truly unidirectional. The giver, at the same time, receives. The donor does not merely deprive themselves of something, but enters into a relationship with another human being and, through them, with the very Source of berachah. The mystical tradition also sees in the material act of Tzedakah a representation of the ineffable Name of Hashem, Yud-He-Vav-He. The Yud (י) is the coin, small like the very shape of the letter; the first He (ה), whose numerical value is five, represents the five fingers of the donor's hand; the Vav (ו) is the arm reaching out towards the other; finally, the second He (ה) represents the five fingers of the recipient's hand. The human being who gives, therefore, does not merely perform a social gesture: through their own body and action they symbolically construct the Name of Hashem and become a channel through which the Shechinah can manifest in the world. And it is significant that to complete that Name the hand of the recipient is also necessary. Without that second He the Name would remain, so to speak, incomplete. The poor person, then, is not simply someone to whom we do a favour: they are the one who allows us to complete a mitzvah and to make the Divine Presence dwell in the space created between two human beings. Modern psychology and sociology sometimes speak of "selfish altruism": one can give also to feel better, to receive approval or to build an image of oneself. How often is even the amount of a donation made public, almost to show what one possesses rather than what one is truly willing to give. The Torah knows this frailty of the human soul well and teaches that Tzedakah must be accompanied by discretion and modesty. Rambam, in his celebrated scale of the levels of Tzedakah, considers particularly elevated the condition in which the donor does not know the identity of the recipient and the recipient does not know that of the donor. Indeed, it is not enough to help one's neighbour: it must be done without stripping them of their dignity. The Gemara teaches: "a gift given in secret placates anger" (Bava Batra 9b): In concealing one's gesture, a person somehow conceals their own ego as well. No applause, no recognition, no moral debt to collect: only the giver, the recipient and Hashem dwelling silently between them remain. In our Parashah the precept of Ma'aser also appears: «Aser te'aser». The Sages play on words and teach: «Aser bishvil she-titasher» – "give the tithe so that you may become rich" (Ta'anit 9a). But we must read this teaching carefully, so as not to transform a sublime mitzvah into a sort of utilitarian investment: I give ten to receive a hundred. The Torah wants to teach us something much deeper about the spiritual functioning of reality. I am reminded, in this regard, of a particularly enigmatic verse: «Ve-chanoti et asher achon, ve-richamti et asher arachem» – "I will grace whom I will grace, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Exodus 33:19). At first glance it might almost seem that divine grace is arbitrary, chas veshalom. But there is a much deeper interpretive key: the mercy that a person brings down into the world becomes itself the measure through which Heaven relates to them. It is the great principle expressed by the Mishnah: «Be-middà she-adam moded, bah modedin lo» – "with the measure with which a person measures, with that they are measured". Perhaps we can thus also understand the words of Proverbs: "Tzedakah saves from death". Not simply as an external reward for an action performed, but because at the moment when a person gives life, dignity, support and hope to another creature, they attach themselves to the middot of the Creator and therefore to the Source of life. Perhaps this is the secret of natan: you can read it going and you can read it returning. Because no hand that opens remains truly empty. We believe that it was we who encountered the poor person; perhaps, instead, it is Hashem who caused two hands to meet because both had something to receive. One needed bread, the other needed the mitzvah. One sought help to continue its journey, the other sought, perhaps without knowing it, a path to draw closer to Heaven. And when finally the coin leaves one hand, travels along the arm and silently reaches the other, for an instant those two people are no longer just giver and receiver: together they have written the Name of Hashem in the world. And perhaps one day, looking back at our life, we will understand that many of the hands we thought we were supporting were, in reality, the hands with which Hashem was supporting us. Because life is a spiritual mirror: when a person takes care of the Creator's creatures, they discover that the Creator has always taken care of them.
Shabbat Shalom
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.