There Shall Be No Needy: How does she get that from the sources?

If you've been following my summaries of There Shall Be No Needy by Rabbi Jill Jacobs here, here, here, here, and even here, you might be wondering: how does Rabbi Jacobs arrive at her conclusions? Are they predetermined, so that she goes looking for a prooftext to support them, or what is her method of reading Torah, Talmud, and other sources?

I admire the author's intellectual honesty. She is quite open about the fact that it's possible to derive different conclusions from the same texts. In chapter 5, for example, she points out that conservative commentators can look at rabbinic sayings about the need to follow minhag hamakom, the custom of the land, and argue that it means "let the market decide."  (She offers a quite different reading of minhag hamakom--in her view, it authorizes local living wage laws, for example--but she gives the sources for the opposing view. See page 109 and footnotes thereon.)

Over and above the close reading of texts, however, Rabbi Jacobs offers us this overall approach: repeatedly, she points out how the current situation in the U.S. denies the basic assumptions on which halakhah is based. Therefore:

Given the discrepancy between halakhic obligations on workers and the contemporary reality, we are confronted with two possibilities. We can either reconsider the halakhic [requirements], or we can accept the current reality as a challenge to traditional halakhah and in turn, use halakhah to critique the present-day situation. [my emphasis]

If applying halakhah in the U.S. capitalist society of the 21st century produces unjust results, then it is the society that has to change.

From this standpoint, she can make an argument using traditional Jewish sources that Jews should not only allow but actively encourage union membership,  require employers to hire union workers, and use the power of government to set wages, hours, and benefits in favor of the more vulnerable party, the workers. 

She can also use the text "Remember that you were slaves in Egypt" and say, remember that you were in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire--and in every major strike--and let that memory steer your moral intuition about how to act today.

If the book reaches conclusions that are conducive to liberal politics in the U.S., it is because liberality is deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition.