Parshas Korach
“And to the Levites you shall speak… and you shall raise from it the portion of Hashem a tenth of a tenth!” (Bamidbar 18:26)
It is a positive commandment that is incumbent on the Levites that they must separate a tenth of the tithe that they take from the rest of the nation, and give it to the priests, as it says “And to the Levites you shall speak… and you shall raise from it the portion of Hashem a tenth of a tenth!”. This is always called “Terumas ma’aser”.
Amongst the roots of this commandment are that since it is apparent that Hashem divided the entire tribe of Levi from the rest of the Jews to serve Him consyantly, and nevertheless, even in the tribe itself we see that there is one who was chosen to be a leader and a prince, (Aharon the high priest) and that his descendants serve Hashem himself constantly, whereas the rest of the tribe are there to help with the service, the priests who do the main service merit to receive twenty-four presents which were given to them, as is explicit in the verses, and the rest of the tribe who were chosen to help them also merited to live a good life without travail, by receiving a tenth of all the produce from the rest of the nation. In order that the Levites should reflect that all of their own good portion and that of their brothers is in order to be able to serve Hashem, they were commanded to give a tenth of everything that they receive from the rest of the nation to the main servers who are the priests, so that they will reflect and realize that there are people higher up than themselves and that above all is Hashem. They also gain a merit that they themselves do not lose on the merit of giving a tithe, so that the Jews cannot say to the Levites “You gained produce and we gained a commandment!”, and the Levites can have both the produce and the commandment.
This commandment applies wherever Terumah and Ma’aser apply.
