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{"id":18074,"date":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2875"},"modified":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T00:00:00","slug":"rabbinic-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/04\/rabbinic-welfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Rabbinic Welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Susan Holman devotes a few pages of her The Hungry Are Dying<\/a>, a study of \u201cbeggars and bishops\u201d in Cappadocia, to a sketch of Rabbinic teaching on almsgiving, drawn from the writings of the Talmudim. The poor appear in three main contexts in rabbinic writing:<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, they are recognized as a distinctly protected economic group by biblical legislation, which acknowledged them as active social agents\u201d (43). This, Holman points out, stands in contrast to the Roman perspective on poverty, which did not treat \u201cthe poor\u201d as a distinct class of people. The rules governing alms \u201cgraded the required sacrifices according to the donors\u2019 means, restricted the time a lender could hold a poor man\u2019s clothing as a pledge, and forbade interest on loans to \u2018the poor among you.\u2019\u201d Rules that permitted poor people \u201cto harvest from the fallen grain in any Jewish field in Israel, illustrates the detailed concern for this aspect of empowering the poor to act on their own behalf\u201d (43).<\/p>\n

Second, \u201cthe poor were eligible as passive recipients of alms and social assistance on the basis of their identity within this special group. This assistance took several forms but particularly included donations from community poor chests administered and distributed by community religious leaders, and by food distribution as in the example of the \u2018soup kitchen\u2019 at Aphrodisias\u201d (43). <\/p>\n

Finally, \u201cthe Jewish texts on the poor recognize their need for human dignity. Donations and the right to receive special protection should (ideally) always also protect recipients from experiencing public shame\u201d (43). Holman expands this point a few pages later: \u201crabbinic texts about the poor often depict them as human beings worthy of dignity and protection from public shame, especially protection from the need to beg in public. Some rabbis advised that alms be deposited in secret, with even the donor (ideally) pretending not to notice. Others suggested that loans were preferable to alms because they gave the recipient the dignity of reciprocating the donation and could easily and quietly be converted into \u2018gifts\u2019 if repayment was or became impossible\u201d (47). <\/p>\n

The aim was not to preserve the purity of the gift, but to protect the dignity and humanity of the recipient of the gift. That the rabbis denied the notion of \u201cpure gift\u201dis evident from reminders that the generous could expect rewards from God: \u201cHe who lends without interest is regarded by God as if he had fulfilled all the commandments,\u201d says one rabbinic text (quoted 47).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"