Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on Tzedakah (video)

[richard]

Here is an outline of the points that Rabbi Sacks makes on tzedakah.

Tzedakah is a fascinating idea. What is the English word for tzedakah?

There isn’t an English word for tzedakah.

If you ask 100 Jews what is the English word for tzedakah, 50 will say charity and 50 will say justice.

In English something can’t be charity or justice at the same time.

What if I owe money? Then to pay it is justice.
What if you need money, then to give it to you it is charity.

In English it can’t be both.

In Judaism these concepts are “bonded with superglue”.

In Judaism what we posses we ultimately don’t own.
Everything ultimately belongs to God and is lent to us in trust.

We are to share. That is why charity is justice, and justice is charity.

Tzadakah— one word that has the power to change the world.

[alan]

Clifford Goldstein wrote an article in the Adventist Review that touches on this topic. He was in India to present a Week of Prayer when he was faced with large numbers of needy people. At first he gave to those begging but then he stopped.

The next day, near the hotel, another mother holding another baby made the same gesture... I tried to ignore her and her hungry baby. I went to my room and hurried to change because I had to... preach the gospel.

Preach the gospel? I had just brushed off a mother asking me to help feed a hungry infant, and now I was going to preach the gospel? The gospel? Every parable, every prophetic utterance, every verse about oppression, poverty, and greed zeroed in on me.

Read more of Clifford Goldstein's article— Necessary, but Not Enough.

[richard]

This paper is a nice collection of Rabbinical thinking on the appropriate response to beggars.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime; The Treatment of Beggars According to Jewish Tradition

Here is a sample of Rabbinic quotes from the paper:

If one noticed a poor man asking for something and ignored him, and failed to give tzedakah, he has broken a prohibitive command, as it is written: Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy brother. (Deut. 17:7) (Rambam, Mishnah Torah "Gifts to the Poor" 7:2)

Poor Gentiles should be supported along with poor Jews; the Gentile sick should be visited along with the Jewish sick; and their dead should be buried along with the Jewish dead, in order to further peaceful relations. (Gittin 61a)

Rabbi Chana bar Chanila'i . . . would leave his hand in his pocket so that (by the immediacy and naturalness of handing him money) a poor person who came to ask would not feel humiliated. (Brachot 58b)