Your Loss Is Your Gain

The lesson that Hoshea wanted Klal Yisrael to learn is in fact a Gemara in Bava Basra (10a). Rebbe Yehudah the son of Shalom expounded, “Just as one’s sustenance is decreed on Rosh Hashanah, so too are one’s losses decreed on Rosh Hashanah.” If he merits, he will use the “loss” for charity. If he does not give money to charity, he will still have the same net loss but he will not get a mitzvah. The money may simply be stolen from him, for example. The Gemara proceeds to relate an incident in which Rebbe Yochanan ben Zakai saw in a dream that his nephews would lose 700 dinarim in a particular year. That year, he pressed them to give tzedakah, and induced them to give 683 dinarim to charity. The night before Yom Kippur, the Kaiser’s officers came to confiscate his nephews’ funds. Rebbe Yochanan assured his nephews that the officers would only take 17 dinarim. They were destined to lose 700 dinarim, but they merited that they fulfilled a mitzvah with 683 of them.

However, all is not lost even with those 17 dinarim. If someone contemplates why Hashem caused him to suffer an unexpected loss, even those dinarim can be a source of atonement. The Gemara says that charity is a source of atonement, but a loss of money can be so as well. The Gemara states that even money that is confiscated by the Romans can be considered charity. At first this seems to lack any explanation. Yet, if one understands that an unexpected loss is caused by Hashem, it can be a source of atonement. In that way, it is similar to charity. (Based on the Meiri.)

The lesson to be learned is that one does not actually lose any money by giving charity. The opposite is true; one is making use of funds that would have been lost to him anyway. The very mitzvah of giving tzedakah will be a source of merit that one’s wealth will be safeguarded. Elsewhere, the Gemara refers to charity as the salt that preserves one’s wealth. B’H we should be zocheh that all losses that were decreed on Klal Yisrael be fulfilled with charity. ™