There Shall Be No Needy, part 3: Taking time, place, and person into account

What constitutes poverty? Is there such a thing as "the" poverty line? And is it always based on the amount a person owns, or do social conditions tell us what a person or household really needs?

Rabbi Jill Jacobs discusses these questions in detail in chapter 3 of There Shall Be No Needy, and I cannot capture the richness of her discussion of traditional Jewish sources. She shows how there is debate on each of these points. Still, just as in the classic rabbinic debates between Hillel and Shammai we study both positions but follow those of Hillel, I think we can safely say these are normative positions in Jewish thinking:

1. Ideally, we should live in a society where poverty is a temporary condition, due to a bad harvest or some other transient turn of events. That we do not live in a society like that today is partly a reflection of industrialization, but it is also a reflection on our tolerating a system that produces chronic poverty.
2. Poor people are not worse than rich people. Poverty is not a punishment. Nor, for the most part, is it an uplifting experience. We don't distinguish between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor: there shall be no needy!
   
3. Poverty is about not being able to live the dignified life that one is accustomed to (or that is customary in one's time). It is immoral to say to someone that they are not really poor because they have a car, a house, or even their grandmother's silver dishes.
4. What it takes to live varies from place to place, too. The standard of living that includes you in the community in one country, or even one region, would make you an outsider in another, and programs to address poverty must take that into account.
5. What I owe, I don't own. Even what I have invested in making my business a going concern is not mine. So, it should not count toward the determination of need.
6. On the other hand, communal resources are limited, too. So, people should voluntarily and ethically take only what and when they need. It is also legitimate to ask about the recipient's own resources when they are not in danger of going hungry or homeless, with great caution and limitations to the questions asked.
7. Err on the side of generosity.

I want to add a teaching that is not mentioned in this chapter, which is that a poor person, too, has the obligation to give to the communal tzedakah fund, because there may be someone poorer and in more need than she is!