Compilation of Tikkun Olam Hunger and Poverty TextsBiblical 1. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I am Adonai your God. 2. When you have set aside in full the tenth of your yield – in the third year, the year of the tithe – and have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, that they may eat their fill in your settlements, you shall declare before the Eternal your God: “I have cleared out the consecrated portion from the house; and I have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, just as You commanded me; I have neither transgressed nor neglected any of Your commandements.” 3. Share your bread with the hungry, and take the wretched poor into your home. When you see the naked, clothe him, and do not ignore your own kin. 4. There shall be no needy among you—for the Eternal will surely bless you in the land that the Eternal your God is giving you as an inheritance. 5. If there is among you a poor person, one of your kin, in any of your towns within your land which God gives you, you shall not harden your heart or shut your hand against them, but you shall open your hand to them, and lend them sufficient for their needs, whatever they may be. 6. Give to the needy readily and have no regrets when you do so, for in return the Eternal your God will bless you in all your efforts and in all your undertakings. 7. One who mocks the poor blasphemes one’s Maker. Rabbinic 8. When you are asked in the world to come, “What was your work?” and you answer: “I fed the hungry,” you will be told: “This is the gate of the Lord, enter into it, you who have fed the hungry.” 9. HaLachma Anya, di achalu avahatana b’ar’a d’mitzrayim. “This is the bread of affliction our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat; let all who are in need come share our Passover meal.” 10. There is nothing in the world more grievous than poverty—the most terrible of sufferings. Our teachers said: All the troubles of the world are assembled on one side and poverty is on the other. Medieval 11. When you give food to a hungry person, give your best and sweetest food. 12. If a community lacked a synagogue and a shelter for the poor, it was first obligated to build a shelter for the poor. 13. Every city with even a few Jewish people must appoint tzedakah collectors, people who are well-known and trustworthy, who will go door to door each week before Shabbat and take from everyone what they are expected to give. And they distribute the money before each Shabbat and give to each poor person enough food for 7 days – this is called the kupah. 14. The highest form of charity is to step in with help to prevent a person from becoming poor. This includes offering a loan or employment, investing in a business, or any other form of assistance that will avoid poverty. The basis for this principle is the commandment in our passage: you shall strengthen the poor. Contemporary 15. In every Jewish city in the time of the Tannaim there were two institutions for tzedakah: public fund (kuppah) and soup kitchen (tamchui). 16. We can see Joseph’s desire to see his impact beyond his own success, “to see God’s hand in his ascent, and to understand his success as being invested with the commandment to repair the world.” As Egypt faced a massive famine, Joseph understood his role as one who could improve the lives of others. Like today’s MAZON and Hunger No More, Joseph is the “quintessential diaspora Jew engaged with the well-being of the Jewish world and non-Jewish world.” 17. Hunger is isolating; it may not and cannot be experienced vicariously. He who never felt hunger can never know its real effects, both tangible and intangible. Hunger defies imagination; it even defies memory. Hunger is felt only in the present. 18. There is no word in the Hebrew vocabulary for “charity” in the modern sense. The word used is tzedakah, which literally means “righteousness.” Tzedakah is not an act of condescension by the affluent toward the needy; it is the fulfillment of a moral obligation. Injustice to humanity is desecration of God. Refusal to give charity is considered by Jewish tradition to be idolatry. 19. The importance of protecting anonymity is the dominant classical opinion. However, the famous story about Mar Ukba and his(nameless) wife preserves another tradition and a completely different mode of tzedaka conduct. When Mar and Mrs. Ukba are seen by the beneficiary of Mar’s anonymous tzedaka, they flee and end up hiding in a still-hot communal oven. Mar Ukba is then forced to stand on his wife’s feet(which were accustomed to baking in the regularly hot furnace), and he suffers a double shame, having to rely on a woman after having been “unmasked” while distributing his tzedaka. In response to his amazed query as to why she did not suffer from the burning stove, Mrs. Ukba pointed out that she conducted her tzedaka activities face-to-face by making sandwiches for beggars at her kitchen door and, as a consequence, did not suffer red-hot shame at being recognized. So we learn that Mar Ukba’s accounting and allocations removed him from the opportunity to engage in a true meeting between provider and recipient, while Mrs. Ukba’s direct, small-scale tzedaka procedures earned her both affection from the ones whom she benefited and honor from God, who gave her a capacity to endure great physical difficulty that her husband could not. In this case, then, the Talmud instructs us about the relative merits of the male and female modes of tzedaka performance.( B. Talmud, Ketubot 67b) 20. All too often, things are donated to a food or clothing drive with an attitude of “if they are so poor, they shouldn’t be picky.” The rule of thumb should be that if you wouldn’t give or feed it to a relative, you should not give a donation. Donated clothing must be clean and in good repair, or the agency bears the cost and responsibility of getting rid of it. Donations to food pantries should be thoughtfully selected, not just a way of cleaning out our shelves. Pantries that serve families are in desperate need of baby formula and snacks for children. Contacting your local agency before organizing will help ensure that real needs will be met. 21. Why should someone be entitled to eat meat instead of rice and beans? In a world of limited resources, I believe it is more important to bring everyone to a minimum acceptable standard before raising certain people to a higher standard to which they had become accustomed. That said, sometimes keeping people at a higher living standard for a short time might allow them to recover and maintain themselves independently. For this reason, I don’t entirely reject this teaching of our tradition. 22. Isaiah 5:16 teaches us that we can actually enhance holiness in the world through acts of tzedaka. We can expand the presence of the Divine in our midst through these acts of righteousness. We thereby help not only the recipients of our gifts, but our community and ourselves. 23. The Maharal of Prague taught that there are two types of tzedaka: reactive and proactive. Reactive tzedaka is based on compassion for those who suffer, and it is almost selfish because it is giving in order to remove the painful sight of poverty. Proactive givers seek out opportunities without waiting to be asked; they understand partnership with the One.(Netivot Olam, Netiv Hatzedaka, Chapter 1) 24. A wealthy Jewish couple who are friends of mine are so concerned that there be parity in their tzedaka distribution that the foundation they endowed gives set percentages of its annual distributions to Jewish and non-Jewish causes. They also keep a percentage in reserve for discretionary giving in the event of emergency. 25. Organizers who work with the homeless disagree about the best way to support beggars on the street. Many recommend providing a meal, rather than cash. It may take a few extra minutes to pick up a sandwich, or to bring a beggar a cup of coffee and a donut. But in the end, the person on the receiving end will have a more tangible interaction with a caring human being. Most beneficial would be a contribution to a local shelter and advocacy on behalf of affordable housing, in addition to a one-to-one relationship on the street. 26. My father grew up in a very poor household. Yet my father only realized his family was poor years later, when reflecting back upon his childhood. Because the family put money in the household pushke each Friday night for the “poor people,” my father never thought of his own family as poor. The practice of Tzedaka gave as much to the givers as to the receivers. 27. Whoever cannot survive without taking charity, such as an old, sick or greatly suffering individual, but who stubbornly refuses to accept aid, is guilty of murdering himself……yet one who needs charity but postpones taking it and lives in deprivation so as to not trouble the community, shall live to provide for others. 28. A person should be more concerned with spiritual than with material matters, but another person’s material welfare is his own spiritual concern. The Spiritual Dimention of Justice 29. And God said, "Let us make adam in our image, after our likeness... And God created adam in God's image, in the image of God, God created adam, male and female God created them. 30. For this reason was the human being created alone, to teach you that whosoever destroys a single soul, Scripture imputes guilt to him as though he had destroyed an entire world. And whosoever preserves a single soul; Scripture ascribes merit to him as though he had preserved a complete world. 31. You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt. 32. Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 33. Rabbi Hama... said: What does the text mean, 'You shall walk in God's paths?' Surely this does not imply that a person may actually walk behind the Divine presence. Rather the meaning is to walk after the attributes of the Holy One. As God clothes the naked... so do you... clothe the naked; as the Holy One visits the sick... so do you visit the sick; as the Holy One comforts mourners, ... so do you comfort mourners; as the Holy One, buries the dead, so do you bury the dead. 34. You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy." 35. The utmost virtue of a person is to become like God, as far as one is able. 36. Tohu (disorder) refers to the state of the original Sefirot (Divine Emanations), as unformed and unordered points. Tikun (restitution; reformation) refers to the state of the sefirot rearranged, meded and reformed…Thus among the Sefirot of Tohu there is no inter-relationship… no mutual inclusion- each on its own, without relating to its opposite. The Sefirot of Tikun, on the other hand, compound one another…permitting the mitigating influence of wisdom, and are, therefore, able to inter-relate. 37. A theology which is not a plan of social action is merely a way of preaching and praying. It is a menu without the dinner. 38. Belief in God has to do with our attitude toward life itself. Do we find life good? Is life worthwhile? If we believe that life is worthwhile, that it is good, that, in spite of all the sickness and accidents, in spite of all the poverty and war, in spite of all the sad and difficult conditions in the world, the world is a wonderful place to live in and can be made still a better place, then we believe in God. When we believe in God, we cannot be discouraged because we believe that all the misery in the world is due, not to the fact that misery must be there… but to the fact that we have not yet discovered how to do away with that misery. 39. Many Reconstructionists have their most profound experiences of God through tikkun olam. It is not out of charity that they align themselves with people who are oppressed or less fortunate, but rather out of the teaching that all human beings are worthy of respect and opportunity… and tikkun olam may be the most concrete and palpable way to make God’s presence manifest in our world. 40. We cannot merely pray to God to end starvation; Therefore we pray instead 41. A major goal of Jewish meditation is self-rectification (tikkun). Tikkun is the process of returning back to one’s neshamah for the purpose of refining one’s character. For example, one’s fearful parts can be transformed into the quality of sensitivity, stubbornness into determination, procrastination into serenity… The process of tikkun helps to refine and rebalance the world. The healing of the world begins with the healing of oneself. |
