We find in this week’s parsha the following sentence (Deut. 26:12): "When you have set aside in full the tenth part of your yield—in the third year, the year of the tithe—and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat their fill in your settlements, you shall declare before the Lord your God…" Let’s talk a bit about this institution of ‘tithing.’
‘Tithe,’ like the Hebrew ‘ma’aser,’ comes from the word ‘ten’ and literally means one-tenth. The basic law of the tithe is that one-tenth of one’s income (produce and domesticated animals, in an agrarian society) is to be given over to the Temple to support the religious establishment. The tithe is simply a tax, and is over and above the obligation to bring various thanks and sin and guilt sacrificial offerings, and other gifts such as first fruits and first-born animals to the Temple during the year. Tithing was common in almost all cultures throughout the ancient Near East, and is found today in some cultures, including in America the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons).
On its surface, tithing would appear to be a fairly simple law, and yet its exposition in the Bible is less than straightforward. Take, for example, the reference in our parsha. What, we wonder, is so special about the third year that it comes in for special mention, and why is this tithe being given to the poor, rather than to support the Temple?
The answer is that in Deuteronomy, we are told about two different types of tithes, which are to be given in different years of the seven year cycle. (All agricultural laws must be related to the seven year cycle, because every seventh year, the land had to lie fallow, and whatever grew of its own accord was considered ‘ownerless’ and could be eaten by anyone. Therefore, it is impossible to give a tithe during the seventh year, and all the laws of tithing apply only to the six years during which there is an actual cultivated crop.) In the first, second, fourth and fifth years of the cycle, one had to take the tithe up to Jerusalem and eat it there with all one’s family and household (including the neighborhood Levite). If it was too much trouble to shlep it all the way there, you could convert the produce to money, take the money up to Jerusalem, and then buy whatever you want in Jerusalem to eat there. However, in the third and sixth years of the cycle, instead of eating the tithe in Jerusalem, one simply distributed it to the needy of one’s own neighborhood: the Levites, widows and orphans and homeless. The tithe in these two years is called the Poor Tithe. This Poor Tithe was one of the safeguards built in to the Biblical economic system to ensure that the poor shared in the bounty of the land.
Some might be inclined to argue that the Poor Tithe is the only real tithe discussed in Deuteronomy, since in the other years, one doesn’t actually give away any of one’s income—one merely has to eat it in Jerusalem. For this reason these third and sixth years of the cycle are called the Year of the Tithe in Deut. 26:12.
This system of tithes as described in Deuteronomy is different from the system described in Leviticus and Numbers. There, one simply has to give a tithe to the Levites of one’s local area, and they, in turn, give one tenth of their tithe to the priests in Jerusalem. And this tithe applied to all six productive years of the cycle.
So what’s going on here? Is there really supposed to be a 20% tax? Ten percent off the top goes to the Levites (who in turn give the priests in Jerusalem their rake), and 10% of the balance either gets eaten by the family in Jerusalem or, in years 3 and 6, given to the poor? Or are we dealing with two different systems used at different times?
For the rabbis, there was no question. The Torah is a complete and unified work, with no contradictions. Therefore, they understood that there really is a 20% tax (19% technically). The first tithe goes to the Levites, and the second tithe is taken up to Jerusalem. In the 3rd and 6th years, this second tithe is replaced by a third tithe (the Poor Tithe). This is the rabbinic reading, which they tried to enforce during the later 2nd Temple period. However, the burden of a 20% tax met with a lot of resistance on the part of the common people, which is why there is an entire tractate of the Mishna—Demai—devoted to dealing with produce about which the rabbis did not trust that the farmers had taken the proper tithes.
On the other hand, many scholars today see two different tithing systems that were operative at different times. In the early days of the first Temple, Jerusalem was only one of many places of worship, and there were lots of local shrines kept up by the Levites. It is these local shrines that were the beneficiaries of ‘the first tithe,’ and they sent a portion up to Jerusalem for the priests at the Central Temple. However, later in the First Temple period, under King Josiah, there was a reform (in 622 BCE) that abolished all the local shrines, and centralized worship at the Temple in Jerusalem. Most scholars feel that the ‘newly discovered book of the Law’ that was brought to King Josiah, on which he based his reform, was in fact a version of the book of Deuteronomy as we know it today, with its great emphasis on centralizing the sacrificial practice in Jerusalem. With the local shrines abolished, there was no need to give tithes to them or to the local Levites who had officiated in them, so this first tithe was abolished when the shrines were. As a consequence, the Levites were left without means of support (which is why they figure so prominently among the poor as enumerated in Deuteronomy). However, because the idea of tithing was so central to their culture, it couldn’t be eliminated completely, so it was changed to the Deuteronomic system we have just described, of eating one’s own produce in Jerusalem and every third year, supporting the poor.
So, all this is very interesting as a historical exercise, but what does it mean for us today? What can we learn from it? I think that if we accept the scholarly understanding of two different systems, we can derive from this is a better appreciation of the overriding importance of caring for the poor that pervades the entire Bible. Under the Biblical agricultural rules, there were already in place methods for insuring sustenance of the poor: the areas of the field that were to be left for gleaning; ‘forgotten’ bushels that became the property of the poor; the seventh year, when the poor could gather at will from crops that sprang up of their own accord. And these were only the mandatory provisions. In addition, there were charitable distributions freely given by the people who could afford to do so.
Now, all of the sudden, for political reasons, it becomes important to discontinue the tithing system that supported the local shrines. In order to further strengthen the concept of a Central shrine, and to support its host city economically, the tithe was changed to a requirement of bringing the food to Jerusalem and consuming it there. In addition to benefiting the Jerusalem merchants, this really also benefited the people, because as we have said earlier, it meant that they really weren’t paying a tithe–they were eating their own tithe, but in Jerusalem, instead of at home. And the result was a windfall for the people—they got to keep their tithe (net of the cost of getting to Jerusalem). And there’s no reason it couldn’t stay that way.
But no. Because the poor were not granted a share in this windfall, the tithing system was changed to insure that fully one third of this windfall was devoted completely to the poor, the homeless, the orphan and the widow.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we’ve seen a tremendous increase in the homeless and needy, the orphaned and the widowed, that calls out for our help. Maybe this hasn’t been a windfall year for us; nevertheless, in the spirit of the Poor Tithe we have just learned about, we need to dig deep to take care of them. We offer up prayers on their behalf, and that is fine; but they need more than that: they need their share of the bounty of the land.
Shabbat shalom and happy digging.