ספר דברים

Deuteronomy 14,22. “you shall tithe (twice) all the ‎yield of your sowing, etc.” The Talmud, Shabbat ‎‎119 in commenting on the repetition of the words ‎עשר תעשר‎, ‎says: “give your tithe so that in turn you will become wealthy, i.e. ‎able to tithe more.”‎In order to understand what appears at first glance as an ‎arbitrary way of interpreting this verse, we must consider the ‎following. When a person makes a charitable donation, either to ‎an individual or a charitable organization, this deed comes to the ‎attention of G’d in heaven. Let us illustrate by means of a parable. ‎When a person has donated a gold coin to charity or some other ‎measurable unit of his harvest, a tenth of this rises heavenwards, ‎and when it arrives there it is inspected and its origin is identified. ‎It is recognized that this donation was the result of the donor ‎possessing tenfold the amount that he donated to charity. As a ‎result of having been associated in heaven as belonging to the ‎donor of the gold coin that reached heaven, the remaining 9 gold ‎coins belonging to the donor on earth are now considered in ‎heaven as being part of the fulfillment of this commandment. ‎The reason is simply, that unless the donor had owned ten gold ‎coins he could not have donated this coin to this particular ‎charity. As a result, the donor will be enabled to donate ten gold ‎coins as his tithe from the following year’s harvest (income). It ‎follows that his entire harvest of the previous year had by then ‎been converted into being only a “tithe,” i.e.10% of his harvest ‎‎(income). This process is liable to repeat itself year by year, as ‎long as the owner of the gold or field keeps up the mitzvah of ‎tithing meticulously. The Torah by writing ‎עשר תעשר‎, hints that ‎people performing this commandment will experience that their ‎wealth increases tenfold i.e. ‎עשר תעשר‎ is equivalent to saying: ‎‎“ten times ten.”.‎