 So many people are aware of the Christian Bible, what we sometimes are here as referred to as the New Testament, and the Christian Bible begins with four biographies of Jesus, the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But the rest of the Christian Bible are basically letters. They're letters, they're epistles, and most of these letters are written by Paul, the apostle Paul. And some of them we don't know who wrote, they could have been written by Paul, they may have been some student of Paul. I wanted to focus for a few minutes tonight on the second book of Corinthians, second Corinthians, there are two books, first Corinthians, second Corinthians, and I wanted to share something that is interesting to be found in second Corinthians chapter nine. So in this chapter, Paul speaks about the concept of giving and charity, which is an important concept that everyone would jump up and say that's a good thing. But it's interesting that when you read this chapter, Paul focuses on the giver. Paul focuses on the giver and the emotional state of the one that's giving. Paul speaks, for example, about the fact that when you give, you should not do it grudgingly, you should be very generous, and that's basically what he focuses on. What's not spoken about by Paul, and it's very interesting, Paul does not speak about the thing that the Torah focuses on. When it comes to giving and to what we call staka, sometimes translated as charity, the focus of the Torah is not primarily on the emotions, on the internal state of the giver, as much as a concern for the emotions of the receiver. And Paul doesn't really speak about this. Paul doesn't focus so much on what is going on inside the person who's receiving from others. And what we find in the Torah, we find in Jewish teachings is a tremendous concern for the feelings and dignity of the person who receives. And the reason is that receiving from others can be degrading, it can be demeaning, it can be demoralizing, welfare and receiving welfare can be crushing to a person's self-esteem. And this is what the Torah is extremely concerned about. How can giving be done in a way that preserves and supports the feelings of the one who's receiving? That's the focus of Jewish literature, whereas Paul is mainly concerned about you, the giver, don't do it grudgingly, do it generously, and he doesn't speak about what about the one receiving. The book of Psalms, chapter 41, verse 2, says, ashrei maskeel eldal, which means that fortunate is the one who is thoughtful for the needy. If we are thoughtful regarding the person who is receiving, we are fortunate. We are blessed. The Torah praises the person who doesn't just give but gives sensitively and gives with a concern for the impact their giving is going to have. Maimonides, writing in the 13th century, famously speaks about eight levels of staka, eight levels of giving. And his levels are structured in a way where he takes you from really the lowest level of giving to the highest level of giving. And if you focus on these levels, you'll see that what makes the level higher is a greater degree of concern for the feelings of the recipient. So the worst level of giving, I mean, it's better than nothing, the worst level of giving is if you give someone, but you give it grudgingly, right? Someone comes to your door and, you know, they're knocking and they've got their hand out, well, you don't want to just send them away, but you're not giving it with a smile on your face. And so that's really the least praiseworthy form of giving. Then what's higher is to give cheerfully even if you're not giving as much, even if you're not giving adequately, maybe the person really needs enough money to buy dinner and you're giving only half of that, but if you give it with a smile, that's even better than the person who gives them everything they need but grudgingly. The next level up is giving directly to someone, obviously cheerfully, but only after being asked, only after they approach you. The next level up is giving directly to someone even before they approach you, meaning you anticipate someone's need and they don't have to demean themselves by asking. The next level up is where you don't know the recipient, you don't really know the person receiving, but they know who you are. That's a little bit better. But what's even better than that is where you know the recipient but they don't know you. Again, because the more the recipient has to interface with the giver, it's demeaning to them and the more anonymity they could have, that's really on a higher level. The higher level up than that is where you don't know each other. It's totally anonymous. And the highest level is where you don't even give a handout. You give someone a loan, you get someone a job, right? You put someone in a position where they're able to support themselves. That's the highest level because there they're totally empowered and there their dignity is totally preserved and not getting a handout. Now what's fascinating is that this same chapter in 2 Corinthians has a parallel to God giving. So the chapter begins by speaking about human interactions, human giving. But then Paul ends the chapter by speaking about the great gift, the great gift that God gave to the world. And according to Paul the great gift was that he sent his son Jesus to die for our sins. According to Paul in this chapter and throughout the Christian Bible, this is the greatest thing that God did for the world. Was that God loved the world so much, it says in John chapter 3 verse 16, God loved the world so much that he gave his only begotten son so that everyone who believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. And that in Christian thinking is the great gift that God gave humanity. But what's fascinating is that again there's no thought given to the receiver. Now one of the things that we speak about in Jewish literature is why God created the world. Why did God create the world? Why are we here? And so our literature teaches very clearly that you can think about God as a parent. We speak about God as a Vinu Shabbat Shemayim, our heavenly Father, our heavenly parent. So we think about what is every parent, at least a normal parent? What does every parent want for their children? Every parent wants their children to have the ultimate amount of satisfaction and joy and pleasure and fulfillment that's possible in life. And no parent is going to say, I'll be very happy if my child has an adequate amount of pleasure, just enough pleasure. Parents would want to be able to say, I would like my child to go through life first class, not economy class, if they could. That's what any parent wants. And God is basically the same. What God wants from us, when God created us, is that we should experience the ultimate amount of pleasure and joy and fulfillment that's possible for a human being. That's why we're in this world. So the $64,000 question is, well, what is that great joy and fulfillment and pleasure that's possible? What is the most pleasurable thing available to us as human beings? Some people would say it's sitting on the beach, and some people would say it's having dark chocolate, and some people would say it's, I don't know, bowling, whatever people have many, many ideas about what's the greatest pleasure in life. But our literature says that the greatest pleasure in the world is to connect with the source of all other pleasure. So there is a source of all pleasure in the world, and that's God. And so the greatest potential pleasure and fulfillment that a human being could achieve is to have a connection with God, is to have an experience of God, is to attach ourselves to God, is to be close to God. Everything else is basically the gifts that God gives us. But the gifts point somewhere. Every gift that's terrestrial, every gift that's earthly, every gift that's physical, they all point up and beyond themselves to the Creator. All the beauty in this world points to the artist. And so that's why we are in this world. That's God's agenda. That's God's goal, is for each of us to achieve the potential of being close to Him. So now we have a big question. How do we do that? How do human beings experience closeness to God? And the truth is we're not in the best place for it. We're not in the best place for it. If you go to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and you walk in there with very, very heavy duty headphones on, super duper headphones, you're not going to fully appreciate the beauty of the symphony because your ears are being blocked. And the truth is that we experience God primarily with our soul, not with our body. And the problem is that we're living in a world which is very physical. We're in a physical world. We have physical bodies. And so anything spiritual in this world, there's interference. It's like we don't hear that clearly. It's like this world is being at this incredible symphony with these headphones on. And so the arena in which we're able to fully experience God fully is not in this physical world but in the spiritual world which we call the afterlife. This world is basically a very short experience. People are here for 60, 70, 80, 90, 120 years. That's basically it. And then we graduate, hopefully, to the spiritual world which we call the afterlife, olam haba. And there, we're not encumbered with physicality. We're not encumbered by a body. There, it's our soul is able to fully experience God and godliness. So the big question, it's an obvious question, is that if God intended for us to experience him, experience him and have the joy and pleasure and fulfillment of being close to him. Why did he put us in this world? Why didn't God create human beings and stick them up in heaven? What is the purpose of being here? So our mystical literature says, very, very simply, that for us to just be given this great joy and this great pleasure to be given it as a handout for free without working for it, it's humiliating. The mystical literature refers to it as the bread of shame, the na'amad chisufah. And anything that you don't work for in your eyes is cheap. And anything that you get as a handout is humiliating. And it's not totally pleasurable. So God, in his great love for us, wants to put us in a situation where we're not getting welfare and we're not getting a handout and we're not getting it for free. So we have to work for it. And we're in this world, not for a very long time, we're in this world to overcome obstacles and that's what all of life is about. All of life is overcoming challenges and temptations and obstacles. It's not easy to be honest. It's sometimes very tempting to be dishonest. When you choose up and you choose honesty over what's expedient, then you're growing spiritually and you're earning your share in the world to come. And so we're put into this world because God is sensitive to our feelings as the recipient. And just as the beginning of this chapter that we find in the Christian Bible basically ignores the impact of receiving upon the recipient. The end of the chapter also seems to ignore this very important idea that the great gift that God could give human beings would not be something like just believe in Jesus and you're going to go to heaven because that is on a certain level cheap. I haven't done anything. I haven't worked. I haven't earned anything. Jesus did everything for me. And what God wants is for no to give us the opportunity that we should work. We should strive. We should earn. We should deserve. And that's the kind of gift that ultimately we will fully appreciate and fully love and enjoy.