The sages taught that wealth spent on Torah study is the only wealth that endures. The Midrash (Pesikta 28, Leviticus Rabbah 30) tells of a man who possessed great fortune and faced the choice that every wealthy person ultimately confronts: spend it on yourself, or invest it in eternity.
He chose Torah. He used his wealth to build study houses, to support scholars who could not support themselves, to purchase scrolls and fund the copying of sacred texts. His contemporaries thought him foolish. "You could have built palaces," they said. "You could have raised armies. You could have lived like a king."
"I am living like a king," he replied. "A king whose kingdom will never fall."
The sages compared him to a man who invests in a field versus a man who invests in a ship. The field is fixed — it cannot move, cannot be stolen, but it is limited to the land it occupies. The ship can travel the world and bring back treasures from every port. Torah is the ship. It travels with you into the World to Come. Property stays behind.
Song of Songs (8:7) says: "If a man offered all the wealth of his house for love, he would be utterly despised." The sages read "love" as Torah — and the verse as a warning: do not try to buy Torah with money. But the reverse is permitted and even commanded: spend money to create the conditions in which Torah can be studied. Build the schools. Feed the scholars. Light the lamps. The wealth you spend on wisdom becomes wisdom itself — and wisdom, unlike wealth, cannot be lost, stolen, or taxed.