DEUT698 The atmosphere in Jerusalem [during the festivals], says Rambam [Maimonides, would encourage public–spiritedness. Food would always be plentiful, since the fruit of trees in their fourth year, the tithe of cattle, and the corn, wine, and oil of the second tithe would all have been brought there. They could not be sold and they could not be kept for the next year; therefore much would be given away in charity, especially (as the Torah specifies) to "the Levite… and the stranger, and the orphan, and the widow" [this verse]. Writing about America in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville found that he had to coin a new word for the phenomenon he encountered there and saw as one of the dangers in a democratic society. The word was individualism. He defined it as "a mature and calm feeling which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends," leaving "society at large to itself." (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, abridged with an introduction by Thomas Bender (New York: Vintage Books, 1954), 2:104). Tocqueville believed that democracy encouraged individualism. As a result, people would leave the business of the common good entirely to the government, which would become ever more powerful, eventually threatening freedom itself. It was a brilliant insight. ... Where public–spiritedness is low, society fails to cohere and the economy fails to grow.… Loving God helps make us better citizens and more generous people, thus countering the individualism that eventually makes democracies fail.