[Avodah] beautifying the mitzvas.....priorities in spending??

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 09:53:20AM -0700, Harvey Benton wrote:
:                    Can we justify three or four hundred
: dollar etrogim, etc,  if we know that our neighbor needs
: medical attention and cannot afford it??

: are we responsible (or even required menchlachkeitly)
: to buy a less expensive etrog (or R. Tam Tfilling, etc)
: for our son/s, if we know that our neighbors/fellow jews/
: lack/s basic medical necessities, housing, food, etc...
: ?????

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 02:34:12PM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
: 1. If one is giving the halachically required (or even more so the
: maximum) amount of tzedaka, no chiyuv to give more

It's unclear if there is a maximum if people are coming to you. I actually
know and look up to a couple who rely on this heter. (I also wonder about
the eficacy of telling HS scholarship committees that since you are spending
more than 20% of your income on educating above-bar/t-mitzvah-age children,
you are being asked to violate halakhah.)

: 2. by this definition one would be required to give up all discretionary
: spending as long as there was one individual in need.

I think this is different. We can ask about the proper balance of money
spent on mitzvos and that on luxury, and why it isn't 100% vs 0%. But I
understood RHB as asking more about what attitude we should have toward
various mitzvos: Should we be thinking of a $300 esrog the same way we
do as luxuries -- the mitzvah we want and would need to pull money away
from for tzedaqah?

IOW, since this person does today want to buy that extra beautiful pair
of tefillin, he should buy them mikal vachomer from the permissability
of buying luxuries.

People spend money on what motivates them. If we give too many rules about
which mitzvah he ought to invest in, or which tzedaqah has priority,
we are likely to find that less money is being spent overall. People
both need and deserve some freedom to make these decisions according to
their own interests.


But (and this is how I understood the original question) should we be
working on reprioritizing our relative love of various mitzvos? *Ought*
hiddur mitzvah be more important to me than the mitzvah itself of
tzedaqah?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
micha at aishdas.org        The end is near.
http://www.aishdas.org                   - Rav Moshe Sherer
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