The second tithe and the making of a strong society. Biblical Israel, from the time of Joshua

until the destruction of the Second Temple, was a predominantly agricultural society. Accordingly, it was

through agriculture that the Torah pursued its religious and social program.

It has three fundamental efforts. First was the alleviation of poverty, for many reasons the

Torah accepts the basic principles of what we now call a market economy. But though market

economics is good at creating wealth, it is less good at distributing it

equitably. Thus, the terrorist social legislation aimed in the words of Henry George to lay the

foundation of a social state in which deep poverty and degrading want should be unknown. Hence the institutions that left parts of the harvest for the

poor, Lekit, chikhan, peh, fallen ears of grain, forgotten sheaf in the corners of the field. There was

the produce of the seventh year, the schmitah, which belonged to no one and everyone, and Masei, the tithe

for the poor in the third and sixth years of the

seven-year cycle. Schmitain Yovil the seventh and 50th years with their release of debts,

manumission of slaves, and return of ancestral property to its original owners, restored essential

elements of the economy to their default position of fairness.

So the first principle was no one should be desperately poor.

The second which included Truma and Marcerichon, the priestly portion and the first tithe,

went to support respectively the priests and the Levites.

These were a religious elite within the nation in biblical times whose role was to ensure that the service of God, especially in the temple,

continued in the heart of national life.

There had other essential functions, among them education,

and the administration of justice,

as teachers and as judges.

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