Eleazar of Bartota was a very charitable man, and when the collectors who went round to gather money for charity saw him at a distance, they avoided him, for it was his custom when he saw the collectors soliciting alms to give them all that he had.

One day Eleazar went to the market to buy a few more things which his daughter needed for her wedding, for she was engaged to be married. And as he was going

along, he saw the collectors of charity making their rounds. As soon as they saw him, they tried to hide.

When he noticed this, he ran after them and said, "I adjure you solemnly that you tell me for what cause you are collecting."

"We are collecting," they said, "for the benefit of an orphan boy and girl whom we desire to marry."

Then Eleazar swore by God that those orphans had preference over his daughter, and took everything he had with him and gave it to the collectors, retaining only one shilling. With this shilling he bought wheat, which he took home and put in his corn-bin.

When his wife came home, she said to her daughter, "What has your father brought home for you?"

The daughter replied, "Father put all that he had brought into the corn-bin." The woman went up to see what her husband had brought, but she could not push the door open, for the corn-bin was full of wheat. When she looked into the bin, she saw

that it was filled with wheat to the top. She told her daughter, who ran quickly to her father to the bet ha-midrash, and said to him, "O father dear, just come home and see what your friend the Lord, blessed be He, has done for you."

And she told him the whole story of the wheat.

Then he swore that it should all be devoted to a sacred cause. And he said, "You must not benefit from it any more than the other poor people."

R. Solomon in the Talmud asks, "Why did he devote it to a public cause?"

And the answer given is that this occurrence was a miracle, and when a miracle happens to a person, it is deducted from his reward in the other world. Therefore

he would not enjoy it, and devoted it to charity.