King Monobaz of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism, opened his family's treasuries during a year of famine and distributed everything to the poor. His brothers and his father's family confronted him angrily: "Your ancestors stored up treasures, adding to what their ancestors had gathered. And you have squandered it all!"
Monobaz replied with words that the Talmud (Bava Batra 11a) preserves as one of the most eloquent defenses of charity ever spoken: "My ancestors stored up treasures below. I have stored up treasures above. My ancestors stored treasures in a place where human hands can reach them. I have stored them where no hand can reach. My ancestors stored things that produce no fruit. I have stored things that bear fruit forever."
He continued: "My ancestors gathered money. I have gathered souls. My ancestors stored for others — for thieves, for conquerors, for whoever came after them. I have stored for myself — for the World to Come. My ancestors stored in this world. I have stored in the next."
His family had no answer. Monobaz had not wasted the family fortune — he had converted it into a currency that no thief could steal, no army could plunder, no economic collapse could devalue. The poor he fed during the famine were his treasury, and they were stored in heaven.
The sages cited Monobaz for generations as proof that true wealth is not what you accumulate but what you give away. The only possessions you truly own are the ones you no longer have.