If someone is approached frontally and asked for money he will often give but more in order not have to experience the unpleasantness and accompanying guilt feelings than for pure altruistic reasons. He would rather not have been asked in the first place. The proof is that when a person is not approached he rarely gives. How many people come home after a successful day of work and say "Great! Who can I share all of this money with? Ahhhh, I will give the local yeshiva 500 dollars, the local bikkur cholim fund 350 dollars and send to Yerushalayim another thousand" [I am talking about small money. I am well aware that many frum yidden are receiving 6 figures in bonuses alone]. Jews love their money! [So do goyim, but this blog is not for them...].
Here is the secret: Having more doesn't make YOU more. YOU remain the same no matter how much you have. Says the Rambam in his Moreh Nevuchim [2/12] -
וזה אשר יש לו המותרות הללו לא השיג שום
דבר נוסף בעצמותו אבל השיג דמיון שוא ומשחק
וזה שנעדר מותרות החיים לא חסר לו מאומה חיובי
He who has luxuries has only imagination and nonsense. A person who doesn't have luxries, lacks nothing positive. That is why the Torah said about the mon - ולא העדיף המרבה והמחסיר לא המעיט, the person who took more, had no more, while the person who took less had no less. Explains the Rogochover: The mon was spiritual food. Taking more mon physically had no effect on the reality of how much one actually had. So too, in the real spiritual realm, having more [material goods] doesn't give YOU more. Just דמיון and שחוק.
A lot to expand upon but no time.... I will leave it up to the intelligent reader to look in the sefer Tzafnas Paaneach in the introduction to Breishis page 35 and in Likkutei Sichos Vol. 26 Page 107.
