Q&A: The Commandment of Charity
The Commandment of Charity
Question
I heard in one of the Rabbi’s lectures that the commandment of charity is a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment, and from Rav Yosef regarding one who guards a lost item it sounds like if he were not guarding the lost item then he would have had to give a perutah to a poor person. But it cannot be explained that this is talking about the obligatory aspect of the commandment of charity, because if so, what benefit does it give him? After guarding the lost item he would still be obligated to give, so why would he be considered a paid guardian?
Answer
It is a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment beyond the minimum threshold of a third of a shekel per year.
Your question is not on me but on Maimonides and on Jewish law itself. It can be resolved in several ways. 1. If he is occupied with guarding the lost item, he is exempt from the commandment of charity and does not have to give anything in its place. 2. It is possible that there are situations in which you are obligated to give charity even beyond a third of a shekel, if a poor person comes in a certain situation and there is no one else. And if you are engaged in a commandment, you would be exempt.
It should be remembered that Rav Yosef’s whole calculation is hypothetical: if a poor person comes. But that is true even if no poor person actually came. So when he is guarding the lost item and a poor person comes at that same time, he is exempt from giving to him even if he did not give a third of a shekel that year. And if he already gave, he can still hypothetically be defined as a paid guardian, because hypothetically it could be that he would not have given.
Discussion on Answer
I said that is one possibility. It depends how one understands the law of a third of a shekel. By the way, in charity there is also a prohibition.
And one more thing regarding a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment: apparently there is no commandment that is entirely of that kind. Rather, every such commandment, like tefillin or the priestly blessing, once I have already fulfilled it, afterward on that same day it becomes a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment. And that would come out the same with charity. So if so, all positive commandments are like that?
Where did you get the idea that after I have fulfilled my obligation and then do it again, I have fulfilled another commandment? The simple reading is that after you have fulfilled it, there is no commandment here at all, neither obligatory nor non-obligatory.
Regarding the priestly blessing, the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 28 says: “If another congregation happens to come his way, if he wants he blesses, and if he wants he does not bless.” That is after he has already fulfilled the commandment. If he wants to bless, he blesses—this is a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment according to the Rabbi’s definition—and most halakhic decisors say that he can also recite the blessing “Who has sanctified us…” etc. So you see that there is indeed a commandment after I have already fulfilled my obligation. And likewise with tefillin: if I put them on and took them off and my attention was diverted, if I put them on again I also need to recite a blessing. So it seems that even after I have fulfilled my obligation I am still fulfilling a commandment.
That is only true for certain commandments.
By the way, you quoted the Talmud incorrectly, and that changes the meaning.
Sorry for the digging, I’m asking in order to understand—bottom line, can the Rabbi give an example of a commandment that is non-obligatory from the outset?
I didn’t understand. Who said there is such a thing? On the contrary, I have argued several times that there isn’t.
However, I did mention a dispute between Igrot Moshe, who argued that settling the Land of Israel is a non-obligatory fulfillment commandment, and Rabbi Avraham Shapira, who argued that there are no commandments that are entirely non-obligatory fulfillment commandments.
I seem to recall that someone here suggested another such commandment, but I no longer remember.
So that means that if the poor person is in a situation where there’s no one else to give, and I don’t bring him anything, am I neglecting a positive commandment?