Bring Back the Jewish Family Tax

Re'eh and Maaser Sheni

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Bring Back the Jewish Family Tax

For me, late August is unsettling. Our Brooklyn neighborhood is still emptied out, with much of our Sephardic community lingering at the Jersey Shore.

At the start of the summer, I make grand plans—the family time we’ll enjoy, the learning the kids will do, the new habits we’ll form. But summer has its own gravity. We get pulled along by the kids’ camp schedules and friends, and before we know it, school is here again.

This year, that rhythm helped me hear Moses’ charge at the start of Parashat Re’eh differently: “See, I put before you blessing and curse” (Deut. 11:26).

The parasha makes it sound obvious—choose blessing, choose goodness, choose life. It seems so simple, so black-and-white.

But life rarely feels that simple—especially in today’s fractured, post-trust world. As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre observed back in 1981 in his magisterial After Virtue, we no longer share a common consensus on what “good” and “bad” even mean.

And this was decades before social media and AI—what would he say today? Public discourse now too often collapses into shouting, and even the language of morality feels unstable.

And even when we do see goodness clearly, living it out is still hard. Habit, momentum, and life’s rhythms tug at us. It’s not that we don’t want to choose good—it’s that choosing good is harder than drifting with the flow.

That’s why Moses, ever the pedagogue, doesn’t just command us to choose good. He also gives us practices—rituals that shape our habits and train our hearts—so we can truly live out that choice.

Enter the Jewish family tax.

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Maaser Sheni

We usually think of taxes as a modern invention, enforced by governments. But the Torah outlines a sophisticated system of “taxes” (ma’asrot).

Landowners gave portions of their produce to Levites and priests—a national-religious tax to support communal institutions. Another portion went to the poor, ensuring the vulnerable were cared for.

Many of us are familiar with these obligations, and even today many Jews give ma’aser—10% of income set aside for charity.

But there is a lesser-known tithe that feels especially relevant today. In the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th years of the seven-year sabbatical cycle, after designating portions for the priests, Levites, and the poor, farmers were commanded to separate a second tithe—ma’aser sheni.

Unlike other tithes, this one wasn’t given away. Families brought 10% of their crops to Jerusalem and were tasked with eating them there in a state of holiness. If transport was too hard, they could redeem the produce for money, bring the money to Jerusalem, and spend it on food and drink for a celebratory family meal.

In effect, ma’aser sheni was a Jewish family tax: a mandated investment in pilgrimage, memory, and education.

The money or produce stayed with the family—but it could only be used in Jerusalem, in a way that sanctified the family’s time together and drew them into the orbit of Torah, Temple, and community.

The Torah states its purpose simply: “So that you will learn to revere the Lord your God always” (Deut. 14:23).

Commentators expand:

• Rashbam explains that maaser sheni allowed children to witness the Temple, strengthening their religious consciousness.
  

• Ibn Ezra notes that in rural agrarian life, children often lacked access to structured education—so the pilgrimage itself became the classroom.
  

• The Midrash says adults, too, were transformed: seeing sages gathered in study near the Temple, their hearts were stirred toward Torah.

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Family Time Today

Learning about maaser sheni made me wonder: what if we revived the Jewish family tax today?

What if we had to dedicate 10% of our income to designing a family educational program that could change our children’s lives? And even if it wasn’t exactly 10%—what if we committed each year not just to vacations, but to investing in transformative family experiences?

As I was wondering this, my imagination didn’t have to stretch far. I would choose a summer month to take my children to Israel. My husband and I would be off from work and fully present. We’d hire guides, explore the land, volunteer, and spend time with the extraordinary people of Israel. I’d bring my kids’ grandparents too, so they could absorb their values firsthand.

Even as I imagined this, I realized it wouldn’t be so hard to carry out. But I also told myself: don’t wait for the perfect, once-a-year investment. We can practice this Jewish family tax in smaller ways too.

It could be as simple as setting aside a long weekend with no phones, learning and cooking together. Or choosing a book of the Bible to study as a family and turning it into trivia nights. Or taking a road trip with grandparents and making family memory the curriculum. Or spending a holiday volunteering together.

The point is to carve out time, money, and intention so that Jewish values don’t just happen “when there’s time,” but are deliberately built into the rhythm of life.

Ma’aser Sheni was a precious tax—not a burden, but an investment. It declared that family, Torah, and values aren’t extras, but the very foundation of who we are.

And that is what we so desperately need today. In a fractured world, Jewish life cannot be sustained by schools or synagogues alone.

We need families who lead—parents who set the rhythm and show their children that Judaism is not background noise but the very center of life.

The Jewish family tax was never about money. It was about vision: training us to invest in our children’s souls, to choose good not once, but again and again, in the daily and yearly rhythms of family life.

That is the rhythm we need back.