donheff said:
I wonder what the original word that has been translated as "spoils" meant.
of course a literal translation could be what would have spoiled.
for six years of my childhood, every tuesday & thursday after public school and every sunday i was sent to hebrew school. every friday night and saturday morning i was in temple. if it wasn't for a whole lot of daydreaming, i never would have survived it.
but there were at least two stories i heard and always kept in mind. one was that when jewish people harvested their fields, they could only put into their carts what they could carry. any part of the harvest which fell back to the field on the way to their cart was left for the poor to freely gather. that translated into my life as leaving coins that fall from my pocket onto the ground. for surely the sweeper needs them more than i.
the other charitable tradition i recall is the jubilee, to return, every 50 years, what was bought or taken. land reverted back to original owners. servants are set free. to that end i'll be willing a good portion of my inheritance to help gay youth who have such a high rate of suicide due, i believe, to low self-esteem caused by teachings of the church.
while most take the jewish term tzedakah to mean charity, it actually refered to what is just and right rather than to what we think of today as charitable. it is less philanthropic and more obligatory. it is not unlike how i feel about lbym because i consider saving money as much a part of the expenses of life, not unlike paying my utility bill, rather than as a part of living below my means. because my means includes saving money. saving money is not simply a byproduct of sacrificing immediate gratification. just as helping others is nothing charitable. it is why you are here.
the shame of charity is that it is so easily corrupted. it is one of the reasons why my bar-mitzvah was my last time in temple and why i vehemently, in many--but not all--respects, oppose the church today. for instance, i am very thankful to the supreme court of florida for stopping baby bush in his tracks. that this antithetical robin hood had tried to steal from our public school system to offer as cash vouchers to religious education institutions slapped the face of charity.
for in true charity you do not take to give. you do not take my property tax money to pay for your services. you do not take my education money to pay for your preaching. true charity obligates you to give what you have, not to take what is mine. why? because we are all sovereign. all of us.
'the earth is the eternal's and all that it holds" ~~ psalms 24:1
"the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is mine" ~~leviticus 25:23