One morning Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai rode out of Jerusalem with his disciples. On the road, he saw a young woman bent over, picking individual barley grains out of the droppings left by cattle.
He stopped his donkey. He asked her name.
"I am the daughter of Nikodemon ben Gorion," she answered.
Yochanan knew the name. Nikodemon had been one of the three wealthiest men of Jerusalem before the Roman siege, famous for his storehouses of grain and wine. The sages told that he could feed the besieged city for weeks from his own granaries. His daughter's dowry alone had been a scandal of opulence.
"What has become of your father's riches?" Yochanan asked, stunned. "And what has become of your own dowry?"
The young woman answered with a proverb the sages themselves taught. "Do you not remember," she said, "that charity is the salt of riches?"
Her meaning was sharp. Riches preserved by generosity last. Riches hoarded decay. Her father had not been known for his charity, and so the storehouses had rotted with Jerusalem itself. She added: "Do you not remember signing my marriage contract?" — reminding the Rabbi that he himself had been a witness to a fortune he now watched disappear from his roadside.
The Talmud (Ketubot 66b) preserves this encounter. Wealth without the salt of tzedakah does not survive the first disaster.