Book 1
From Each According to One’s Ability: Duties to Poor People from the Bible to the Welfare State and Tikkun Olam
Duties to Poor People, the first volume of a trilogy on Jewish Giving, explores conflicting models of the institutional pursuit of economic justice in the Bible, Rabbinic literature and the modern theories of the social welfare state. Judaism generally regards tzedakah or tithes as thoroughly law-regulated duties to the poor who have a right to the payments made to them. “Just” giving is not about charity or philanthropy, which are free gifts and utterly voluntary.
Still within Jewish sources there are radically different rationales and modes of aiding the needy. The prophets speak of poverty as the result of systemic injustice or as an invitation to exploitation, while the laws of the Torah usually regard poverty as a result of bad luck for which agrarian brotherly solidarity is the best insurance policy. The invention of the term and the institution of tzedakah belong to an urbanized Rabbinic Judaism that constitutes the first welfare state dedicated to the needs of the poor with centralized progressive tax collection and bureaucratic distribution — “from each according to one’s capacity and to each according to one’s need.” It is both continuous with and yet less comprehensive than the modern welfare state, which provides services to all citizens, especially those who are working contributors to its social insurance fund. Rabbinic tzedakah is devoted only to the needy, whether or not they are resident citizens of the community.
But this Jewish proto-welfare state provides only maintenance support, not rehabilitation, and it does not seek to repair systemic injustice regarding the distribution of wealth and resources. That is the calling of the prophets in the Bible which has taken the form in Rabbinic tradition, not of tzedakah, but of tikkun olam, legislative and executive reforms that seek periodically to repair or recalibrate what is unjust and ineffective in the system. Duties to Poor People compares and contrasts social tzedek (justice) and tzedakah (social welfare) which are too often conflated.
Book 2
To Each According to One’s Social Needs: The Dignity of the Needy from Talmudic Tzedakah to Human Rights
The Dignity of the Needy explores the deep tension between human dignity and generosity. Does our neediness make us truly human or does it demean us by making us dependent on others? Don’t attempts to alleviate physiological needs — through alms, tzedakah or even welfare bureaucracies — often backfire by insulting us and hurting our social needs for honor and respect? In short, is this book’s title, “The Dignity of the Needy,” an oxymoron? While tzedakah may be meant to alleviate the recipients’ physical needs, it may actually exacerbate their “social need” for self-respect and autonomy.
The second book of this trilogy on classic narratives of giving focuses not on the giver nor on social justice, but on the needs — especially the social need for self-respect and honor — of the recipients of aid. The great insight of the Talmudic treatment of tzedakah is the need for artful giving that seeks to help without causing indignity. However, modern Protestant and Western conceptions of the poor have often portrayed them as freeloaders whose poverty is the result of their character faults that are exacerbated by unscientific welfare support. In the modern period Jewish giving, like contemporary Western philanthropy, has rejected traditional tzedakah as alms and has preferred various systemic solutions to rehabilitate the needy completely.
Set against “begrudging” Protestant state relief, “condescending” private Catholic charity, and Social Darwinist denial of economic support for the poor for their own good, the 20th century social welfare state and the human rights ideologies go to the opposite extreme. These reject the notion of the “self-made man” and adopt an ethical ideology of human dignity whose roots go back to the universal image of God, Biblical and Stoic. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights promulgates economic, social, political and civil rights essential for human dignity. Interestingly, this modern concern recapitulates much of the Rabbis’ fears that tzedakah may inadvertently dishonor the needy by emphasizing their dependence.
However, social democrats and human rights activists fiercely insist on equality as the antidote to indignity, while the Talmudic Rabbis are concerned to give to each according to their “social” needs, including their societal honor which is explicitly non-egalitarian. The Dignity of the Needy compares and contrasts the Rabbinic and human rights approach to the needs and rights of the poor and illuminates tension between the democratic principle of social equality and the Rabbinic obligation to provide for each one’s unique individual needs.
Book 3
For the Love of God: Comparative Religious Motivations for Giving Christian Charity, Maimonidean Tzedakah and Lovingkingness (Hesed)
For the Love of God compares religious motivations for giving to the poor that focus on the sense of self, the values and the emotive world of the individual giver. The duties of society and the sensitivity to the feelings and dignity of the recipients of aid were considered in earlier volumes of this trilogy, but now the inner world of the donors shaped by their religious cultures is on the agenda. Not coincidentally, all three of the cultural terms to be compared — Greek philanthropia, Biblical and Rabbinic hesed, and Christian agape or caritas, charity — are associated etymologically with “love.” Yet these traditions diverge as much as they converge. The central dialogue (or perhaps disputation) in the book is between Paul and Maimonides, between charity as self-sacrificial, altruistic giving and tzedakah as self-protective but responsible and obligatory giving. These religious narratives often polarize mercy versus justice, love of the enemy versus love of the family, love of the sinner versus love of “one’s brother in mitzvot.” But Maimonides and rabbinic tradition also develop a hesed-based model of helping the needy that transcends legal obligations. A subtitle for this book might have been: The Loving Giver: “All You Need is Love” — Lovingkindness (Hesed) and Christian Charity.
But is love enough? Love of God and love of the poor are not the only or the most effective motivations preached by religious fundraisers through the ages — Jewish, Christian and Muslim. There is a shared approach to “making a pitch” for charity and tzedakah that includes both the idea of serving as God’s steward and the self-serving notion that one is well-advised to “bank” one’s alms to the poor so as to guarantee future material and spiritual benefits for the giver (indulgences).
The themes of For the Love of God are crucial for the theologian and for the fundraiser working in “human resource development.” What moves potential donors to make a contribution to a “cause” or to a human being in need? How do their identities and interests determine — often more than the needs or rights of the needy — the donor’s willingness to be generous? Besides accruing merits in heaven and kudos within social circles, the act and the habit of giving may define, shape and sometimes heal the donor. It makes for self-transcendence to let go of what is mine and to reach out to connect to the other and the brother in ways that emphasize our interdependence.
