HOWEVER, THERE WILL NOT BE AMONG YOU ANY NEEDY PERSON,

FOR GOD WILL BLESS, YES, BLESS YOU

IN THE LAND THAT THE LORD YOUR GOD IS GIVING YOU

 AS AN INHERITANCE, TO POSSESS.

WHEN THERE WILL BE AMONG YOU A NEEDY PERSON

FROM ANY ONE OF YOUR BROTHERS,

WITHIN ONE OF YOUR GATES IN THE LAND

THE LORD YOUR GOD IS GIVING YOU,

YOU ARE NOT TO TOUGHEN YOUR HEART,

YOU ARE NOT TO SHUT YOUR HAND

TO YOUR BROTHER, THE NEEDY ONE.

RATHER YOU ARE TO OPEN, YES, OPEN YOUR HAND TO HIM

AND ARE TO GIVE PLEDGE, YES, PLEDGE TO HIM,

SUFFICIENT FOR HIS LACK THAT IS LACKING TO HIM.

(Devarim 15)

 

"Will Not Be" Or "Will Be" - Promise or Challenge?

"However, there will not be among you any needy person" - And further on it states (verse 11) "For the needy will never be gone from amid the land"!? - but [this contradiction can thus be reconciled] when you do the will of the Omnipresent, there will be needy amid others, but not amid you; when you fail to do the will of the Omnipresent, there will be needy among you. A 'needy' person (evyon) has less than a 'poor' person (awni); the 'evyon' is so called because he craves for everything.

(Rashi 15:4)

 

"However, there will not be among you any needy person" - If you release [forgo a debt], The Holy One, Blessed Be He, will repay you.

"For the needy will never be gone from amid the land" - For there is no person in the land so righteous that he does only good and never sins.

(Rashbam, ibid.)

 

"However..." This provides the rationale: Know you, that which I commanded you, not to oppress your brother [by forgoing debts] will not be necessary if all - or most - of Israel will heed God's voice, then there will not be among you any needy person to whom you will have to lend.

 (Ibn Ezra, ibid.)

 

... Those who willingly accept the yoke of Torah and mitzvoth do not have the right to exempt themselves, to remove from themselves these obligations and pass them on to He who opens His hands and satisfies the desire of every living thing. We are charged with a great mission, to make great efforts to strive always towards a reality in which there will be no needy and poor in the Land and in the world.

 (Y. Leibowitz: Seven Years Of Discussions On The Parasha Of The Week, p. 836)

 

 

YOU ARE NOT TO TOUGHEN YOUR HEART;

YOU ARE NOT TO SHUT YOUR HAND TO YOUR BROTHER,

THE NEEDY ONE

Zvi Mazeh

 

This issue is dedicated to the blessed memory of my father and mentor, Yitzchak Mazeh, who revealed to me the social sensitivity of the Torah. These days mark twenty one years since his passing.

 

Parashat Re'eh, like the first three parshiyot of the Book of Devarim, deals with the entry of Children of Israel into the Land, an event which will introduce far-reaching changes in their lives. The verse in our parasha that relates to the offering of sacrifices - "You are not to do - according to all that we are doing here today" - can also be interpreted as representing the radical change awaiting the people.

One of the central components of life in the wilderness was the manna, which supplied the needs of the Children of Israel for forty years. Manna had its own unique laws, among them, "He who gathered much had no excess and he who had gathered little had no deficiency". The manna was apportioned in such a way that each received according to his needs, despite the existence of "he who gathered much and he who gathered little" - two types of people who exist in every normal society.

Egalitarian distribution of the manna is possible only in the ideal situation of wilderness life. In the Land of Canaan, rules of the game will be different. Food will not descend from heaven, and society will change from a society of food gatherers to a society of farmers. Such a society requires initiative, hard work, and diligence; not all men are equal in these respects. In a society which functions according to rules of a free economy, there will always be those who gather more and those who gather less, and therefore "the needy will never be gone from amid the land".

The Torah makes a great effort to minimize the economic inequality. It legislated a series of social enactments aimed at helping those in distress. An apt title could be the verse: "You are not to toughen your heart; you are not to shut your hand to your brother, the needy one." Two of the most important of these laws appear in our parasha in close proximity - the relinquishing of debts and the freeing of serfs. The aim of these two mitzvoth is the prevention of concentration of resources - land and manpower - in the hands of the powerful. The Torah commands us to return the means of production to the hands of the weak, and to create a second chance for people who failed economically and slid down to the bottom of the social ladder.

The idea which is at the heart of these mitzvoth is that the prince and the pauper are of the same essence and of equal worth; only a chain of happenings resulted in the pauper reaching his present state. Therefore the Torah reemphasizes - in these two mitzvoth - fraternity. In the mitzvah of Shemittah - "He shall not oppress his fellow and his brother", and in the mitzvah of releasing slaves, "Should your brother be sold to you, the male Hebrew or the female". The needy and the slave are your brothers, despite their economic state.

Such a concept was not something taken for granted. All ancient civilizations developed a world outlook in which the opulent and the nobility are essentially different from the poor/weak/servant. According to this view, the origin of the social elites differs from that of the slaves. A critical fault line separates the two sectors of society. On the bottom are the poor and the slaves, who perform the physical tasks necessary for the world's existence; on the other side are the nobility of wealth and pedigree, whose responsibility is to lead society and its citizens.

According to this view, the socio-economic stratification, which includes the pathetic status of the poor, is natural and evolves inevitably from the world order. The Talmud places this outlook in the words of the wicked Turnos Rufus, who argues with R' Akiva (Bava Batra 10a):

"And this question asked Turnos Rufus of the wicked of R' Akiva: If your god loves the poor, why does he not support them?"            

Yet more, assistance to the indigent and the slave is a sin, for it contradicts the will of the god, as Turnos Rufus continues:

"I will spin you a parable, to what is this comparable? To a king of flesh and blood who was angry with his servant and has him incarcerated, and commands that he not be given food or drink, and a person goes and gives him food and drink. When the king hears of this, will he not be angry with him?"

The Torah struggles with full force against this concept, which was dominant in the ancient world; R' Akiva rebuts Turnos Rufus, quoting our parasha of the week:

"Replied R' Akiva: I shall spin you a parable, to what is this comparable? To a king of flesh and blood who is angry at his son, and has him imprisoned, and orders that he not be given food nor drink, and a certain person goes and gives him food and drink. When the king hears about this, will he not send him a gift? And we are called sons, as is written: Sons are you to the Lord your God."

This is to say, the deprived and the slaves are also sons of the Lord, who loves them despite the depths to which they have fallen. The approach of the Mishna in Sanhedrin, which teaches that "Therefore man was created singly... so that no one should say to his fellow, 'My father is greater than your father' applies also to socio-economic differences.

If this be the case, the entry into the Land imposes upon the Children of Israel a difficult task: the building of a society which has place for a free market, which rewards small segments of the population with economic wealth, while assisting the weak and preventing their total decline, guarding escape routes - open to all - from degrading poverty.

A society such as this stands in stark contradiction to the land of Egypt, house of bondage, whose entire essence was exploitation of slaves/the weak. Therefore the parasha charges us to remember the bondage of Egypt and to incorporate into our festival joy all the weak of society:

"And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male-servant and your maid-servant and the Levites who are in your gates, and the sojourner and the orphan and the widow in your midst... and you shall remember that you were a serf in Egypt".

In Egypt, you, too, now the powerful, was a serf. We all come from the same place.

The challenge of building a just society becomes especially difficult after the entry into the Land. The descent of the manna every day anew in the wilderness emphasized the total dependence of man upon his Creator. On the other hand, the creation of a normal society that produces its food and all other necessities causes us to forget our dependence upon the Creator and the fragility of human existence. In such a situation it is difficult to recognize the equality of all men, and it is easy to drift towards cruel attitudes.

How amazing it is that the Return to Zion and the building of a Jewish society in Eretz Yisrael should lead us to the same old challenges with which we dealt at the beginning of this article. The social struggles of the past months raise doubts; have we adopted the basic outlook of the Torah, or perhaps the voice of Turnos Rufus the wicked - Heaven forbid! -speaks from the mouths of our leaders?

The handicapped, the aged, and the single mothers, are our brothers and sisters who find themselves in a grim economic state. The basic obligation of Israeli society is to provide them with the means which will facilitate breakout from the vicious cycle of penury. It is so easy to blame the weak and the oppressed for their situation. Such an accusation makes it possible for us to separate between ourselves and them, as though "If they really wanted, they could extract themselves from their state." Such an approach is contrary to the Torah approach, which charges everyone with the mitzvoth of charity and assistance to the weak.

The mitzvah of tsedakah - of social justice (Tsedakah is commonly translated as "charity". Modern scholarship, relating the word to its root "tsedek" - maintain that in the Bible tsedakah means "justice". We have chosen to C. M. Urbach's suggestion - "social justice" - which covers both connotations.) - of which our parasha speaks again and again, is first and foremost the creation of a second socio-economic opportunity. It is not just another important mitzvah; it is the sine qua non for the return to Zion. Writes Rambam:

"The throne of Israel will be established and the true faith will stand only through tsedakah, as is written, "You shall be established through tsedakah" , and Israel will be redeemed only through tsedakah, as is written, "Zion will be saved in the judgment; Her repentant ones, in tsedakah" (Laws of Gifts to the Poor, Chap. 10, Halacha 1).

Professor Zvi Mazeh is Chairman of the Astronomical Institute in Tel Aviv University and member of the Netivot-Shalom executive board.

 

 

The Connection Between "Broadening of Boundaries" and the Lusting for Flesh

"When the Lord your God broadens your territory as he promised you, and you say: I want to eat meat..." - teaches that man enthusiastically lusts only in a situation of excessive expansion, "the lion roars only from a container of meat" (Berachot 32), therefore Scripture states: "When the Lord your God broadens your boundaries" - this will lead you to remove the mask of shame from your face, till you loudly proclaim, "I want to eat meat" - and this somewhat resembles the throwing off of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, to seek out the site of sacrifices. The cause of all this is "Should the place which God chooses be distant from you", for one's awe of the Kingdom of Heaven is proportionate to his proximity to the Temple of God, as is written, "My Holy Shrine you are to hold in awe" meaning that awe of the Kingdom of Heaven will be drawn upon you from the Temple; "Should the place... be distant from you" will result in God being far from your consciousness, therefore all day you will lust, and you will not be ashamed to proclaim "I want to eat meat". I hereby permit you this thing and you shall slaughter from you cattle, etc., as I have commanded you, not at all times but occasionally, when lust becomes overwhelming.

(Kli Yakar, Devarim 12:20)

 

The Torah delivers a veiled admonition regarding the eating of meat; only after "And you say: I want to eat meat, because your appetite craves eating meat" - do we read, "You may slaughter and may eat". The only way to halt your inclination is by moral control, and this control is still beyond you; it is still needed for closer circles. (In his famous essay on the utopian vision of vegetarianism, Rav sees the ideal future, when men will be companion to animals. In this sentence, Rav Kook says that the spiritual forces essential for stopping slaughter of animals for food are currently needed for improvement of man's relations to his fellow man.) And also the distant perfection also necessitates - after the fall (The reference is to the Great Flood, during which man developed an appetite for flesh.) - physical effort, and the replenishing of this [the physical effort] occasionally demands meat nourishment.           

(Rav Kook: Tallelei Orot, Chap. 8)

 

"It Shall Be, In The Place That The Lord Your God Chooses..." (Devarim 12:11) - Limitations On The Location Of - And On Those Authorized To Perform - The Holy Service, As A Tendency Towards Reduction Of This Form Of Service.

For one kind of worship - I mean the offering of sacrifices - even though it was done in His name, may He be exalted, was not prescribed to us in the way it existed at first; I mean to say in such a way that sacrifices could be offered in every place and at every time. Nor could a temple be set up in any fortuitous place, nor could any fortuitous man offer the sacrifice: "Whosoever would, he consecrated him" (I Kings 13:33). On the contrary, He forbade all this and established one single house, "Unto the place which the Lord shall chose" (Devarim 12:26), so that sacrifices should not be offered elsewhere: "That thou offer not thy burnt offerings in every place that thou seest" (Ibid. 12:13) Also, only the offspring of one particular family can be priests. All this was intended to restrict this kind of worship, so that only the portion of it should subsist whose abolition is not required by His wisdom.

 (Rambam, "Guide for the Perplexed, " translated by S. Pines)

 

Today, after more than 3000 years, when we come across the words "Unto the place which the Lord shall chose", almost unthinkingly and directly, our consciousness immediately points to - Yerushalayim. And not just the city, but the Temple Mount in Yerushalayim, as the chosen place of which the Torah speaks. But this must be known and publicized: in the Book of Devarim, as in the entire Torah, there is no hint that Yerushalayim is the place destined to be that chosen place, or perhaps it was selected to be the place which God will chose; we know, as historic fact, that Yerushalayim became the chosen and special place only about five hundred years after receiving the Torah, when Kings David captured this Jebusite city... Similarly, neither in the Book of Joshua, in which there is first mention of Israel's battle against the King of Yerushalayim, nor even in the Book of Shoftim, which tells of the capture of Yerushalayim by the Tribe of Yehuda, a conquest which, it seems, did not last for generations, is there a single hint that Yerushalayim was set aside from all other places in the land for the purpose of serving the Lord. All these facts indicate that although the Torah from the beginning commanded regarding the determination of a chosen cite for the Holy Service, the Torah leaves it up to history to determine its placement.

 (Y. Leibowitz: Seven Years of Discussion of the Weekly Parasha, p. 825)

 

           

 

 

 

 

Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein

Translation: Kadish Goldberg

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