Rav Hisda used to hang an open purse at his doorpost so that anyone who needed money could take some without being seen. This detail, preserved in the Exempla of the Rabbis (compiled by Moses Gaster in 1924 from medieval Jewish folk sources) and rooted in Talmudic tradition, paints a portrait of one of the wealthiest and most generous sages of the 3rd-4th century CE Babylonian academy.
Rav Hisda's generosity was architectural. His house had two entrances, and the open purse hung between them. A person in need could walk in through one door, take money from the purse, and leave through the other — never having to face another human being, never having to explain their poverty, never having to feel the shame of asking. The anonymity was built into the floor plan.
His ovens ran continuously, baking bread for public distribution. He gave away hundreds of cloaks. The scale of his charity was so enormous that it became legendary in the rabbinic academies of Babylonia.
Yet the tale opens with a groan. Rav Hisda groaned, remembering all the great wealth he had once possessed and lost. The man describing these acts of generosity was speaking in the past tense. The bread ovens had gone cold. The open purse was empty. The cloaks were gone. Whatever fortune Rav Hisda had accumulated — and it was clearly immense — had been spent or lost.
The story's power lies in that groan. Rav Hisda did not regret his charity. He groaned for the wealth itself — because more wealth meant more giving. His grief was not that he had been generous. His grief was that he could no longer afford to be. The loss of money was, for him, the loss of the ability to perform kindness on a massive scale.