{"id":98929,"date":"2022-11-20T04:35:13","date_gmt":"2022-11-20T02:35:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/?p=98929"},"modified":"2022-11-20T04:35:13","modified_gmt":"2022-11-20T02:35:13","slug":"a-charitable-consideration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/a-charitable-consideration\/","title":{"rendered":"A Charitable Consideration"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Charitable Consideration<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three brothers from Marseille owned a successful chain of stores that sold clothing and fashion items. Someone once informed on them to the authorities, stating that they were dealing illegally. They were in serious trouble. The tax collectors investigated their accounts and revealed a few discrepancies. The brothers were summoned to court, standing to face a fine of millions of euro.<\/p>\n

The men realized that in order to collect this massive amount, they would have to sell all of their stores as well as their private homes. They would be left nearly penniless. As can be imagined, they were terribly afraid of the outcome of their trial.<\/p>\n

I met them before their case was scheduled. I saw before me three men who were broken and despondent, not knowing how to extricate themselves from the threat looming over their heads.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonored Rav, besides for losing all of our personal possessions, we are faced with another hardship: we will no longer be able to stand behind our commitment to contribute to the charity organizations and Torah institutions. What will we respond to the numerous charity collectors who visit us?\u201d They were utterly devastated by their situation.<\/p>\n

I responded with a question of my own. \u201cLet\u2019s say that you lose all of your money and are left with only the amount which you pledged. Would you take that money for yourselves or donate it to charity?\u201d<\/p>\n

The spokesman of the three answered, with self-confidence, \u201cIf Hashem will leave us with only one store from which to profit, we will gladly donate all of our income to charity.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked the other brothers if they were of the same mind. They, too, averred that they couldn\u2019t care less about their personal losses. The only thing that bothered them was that they wouldn\u2019t be able to maintain their commitment to support Torah scholars. I was very moved by their sincere statements and blessed them, \u201cIn the merit of tzedakah<\/em> which you keep so assiduously, Hashem should allow you to emerge innocent in your upcoming trial.\u201d They left me with my words of encouragement ringing in their ears.<\/p>\n

On the day of judgment, they had to undergo three stages of their trial. The first two stages passed without incident. But at the third and final stage, when the judge wished to open their file, he couldn\u2019t find it anywhere. All of the documents containing the incriminating evidence were gone. Of course, a thorough search was made, but the elusive file was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

The trial was postponed for another fifteen days. The court officials were certain that within that amount of time the file would surely resurface. Fifteen days later, the brothers waited to be called to court once again, but the call never came. One month passed and then another. An entire six months went by, with no summons from the court. The brothers were puzzled, to say the least. After another six months passed without word from the judicial system, the brothers phoned up their attorney and asked if he knew what was going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet dead dogs lie,\u201d was his terse response. \u201cIt was obviously forgotten. You, too, forget about the whole episode.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the brothers were deathly afraid that their money would be sequestered from them at any given time. They asked their attorney to approach the judge and find out what happened with their file. The judge was flabbergasted at receiving such a question. He replied that they should be ecstatic that their case never came to light. They were one lucky lot, and they shouldn\u2019t press their luck any further.<\/p>\n

This incident caused a great kiddush Hashem<\/em>. Everyone who heard about it realized that Hashem is omnipotent. In an instant, He can raise the downcast. Likewise, it taught us all about the tremendous power of the mitzvah of tzedakah<\/em>, which can avert harsh decrees.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Chaim Vital states that when a Jew commits a sin, he is liable to lose the reward of all previous mitzvot, except for that of tzedakah. This is based on the pasuk in Tehillim (111:3), \u201cHis righteousness (or charity) endures forever.\u201d I would like to add that the mitzvah of tzedakah has the potential to bring a person to repent his misdeeds and do teshuvah<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Charitable Consideration Three brothers from Marseille owned a successful chain of stores that sold clothing and fashion items. Someone once informed on them to the authorities, stating that they were dealing illegally. They were in serious trouble. The tax collectors investigated their accounts and revealed a few discrepancies. The brothers were summoned to court, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":28111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1096],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-charity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}