“There shall be no needy
among you.”
I have been thinking, for many years, about
this declaration from Deuteronomy, which is contained in this week’s Torah
reading.
Most commentaries interpret this statement
in light of what we should do to care for those who are in need, whose poverty
has become so pervasive, due to their own particular circumstances, that they
can’t shake it.
Moses Maimonides, in his eight degrees or
levels of Tzedakah, identified ways in which we can give. The ultimate and most effective approach to
giving, he said, is to offer whatever is necessary to help the person in need be
come self-supporting.
This passage which I am about to read from
Chapter 15 of Deuteronomy requires that we not harden our hearts – calling to
mind Pharaoh of the Exodus story, the main purveyor of cruelty in the Torah.
Rather, the Torah says, we should open our
hand and provide what is sufficient to meet the needs of people who are in dire
straits.
We live in a time now when communal
programs and policies, which could fulfill the commandments in this section,
are looked upon with disdain and contempt by some people in our society. There are those who proclaim that everyone
should be able to take care of their own needs. No programs of assistance are necessary to
raise up those individuals and families who have come upon hard times through
layoffs, changes in home values, the high costs of medical treatment and
prescriptions, and other challenges.
There are some members of faith communities
who believe that a person is assigned a particular lot in life by God, and that
giving more than modest assistance to them may counter that divine plan. I would admit, though, that most religious
groups teach their members to do what they can to provide assistance when they
can.
All of this is relevant to the plain
meaning of this passage from Deuteronomy about helping people caught in
poverty.
Today, something else occurred to me –
another level of significance of this passage that I had never thought of
before.
My new insight likely derived from the
upcoming first anniversary of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia. Last year’s right-wing protests resulted in one death and the sounds
of hatred and definite anti-Semitism being chanted on the streets of that
city. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists
who called out “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us” as they
marched through the center of town defined their place in society. First, they made it clear that they begrudge the
persistence of a vibrant American Jewish community, represented well in
Charlottesville. Don’t think that the
rally last year didn’t give Jews in that community concern. It did, enough that several local citizens who
were not Jewish came to offer members of the congregation visible support
outside their synagogue during and after their Shabbat morning service.
“You will not replace us” was a phrase
that expressed an all-encompassing contempt for our society that accepts in our
country the humanity, presence and participation of people of all races,
faiths, and backgrounds. Yes, these
“unite the right” demonstrators first dehumanized Jews, but then, they did the
same to everyone else who was not part of their movement.
I don’t think many people in our country
realized that they, too, were being targeted.
On August 24, 2002, a White Unity Rally at the Kansas Capitol building
in Topeka brought a handful of participants and Neo-Nazi activists together. I was among the many peaceful
counter-demonstrators standing outside a fence placed on the Capitol grounds to
prevent any direct physical confrontation.
We who were outside the
perimeter knew on which side of the fence we wanted to stand, and we were proud
that we were standing there together.
My realization about Deuteronomy Chapter
15, verse 4, “there shall be no needy among you,” somewhat relates to the
dehumanization expressed in these “unite the right” rallies. It is about labels and how we think and
speak about people. It is about which
side of the fence on which we choose to stand: lifting up all people with
respect and compassion or taking them down and isolating them with words of
denigration and prejudice.
“Needy’ is a word that describes a
person’s socioeconomic status. I think
we would all agree that the term has the potential to rob people of their
dignity or to create a stigma about them.
I believe that part of the message of this verse in Deuteronomy was that
we should not see people as “needy.” We
should consider them to be fellow society members who could benefit from our
concern and our help. They are people
like us, who have fallen on hard times. Their difficultie could be alleviated
if we followed Maimonides teaching of helping them find a way to support
themselves.
With a “Unite the Right” rally planned for
Washington, D.C. this weekend in Lafayette Park near the White House, I believe
that this is a time when Americans need to choose the side of the fence on
which they will stand. Some may join
with those who claim that only they have the proper solutions, while their
proposals may not actually address the dire situations in which some people
find themselves, all the while accusing people facing challenges of creating
their own plight. Some may decide to
stand with fellow community members who seek to create approaches than can
benefit everyone and raise up every individual as a person of value who can
contribute something unique to our world.
We
are members of a community and tradition that values every person, every life. Let us conclude with the passage from the
Mishnah on the handout, one that includes one of Judaism’s central declarations
about what binds us together. It reminds
us that we can transcend our differences so that we can see what we continue to
hold in common as move forward on our life’s journey:
This is why
humanity was first created with a single human being:
to teach you that whoever destroys one life, Scripture
accounts it as if he had destroyed a full world;
and whoever saves
one life, Scripture accounts it as if she had saved a full world.
And for the sake of peace among people, a single human
being was created in the beginning so that one should not say to his or her fellow "My lineage is
greater than yours."
And a single
human being was created in the beginning to declare the greatness of the Holy
One, blessed be God: for when one human being stamps out many coins with one
die, the coins are all alike,
but when the Sovereign, the Ruler of rulers, the Holy
One, blessed be God, stamps each person with the seal of the first human being,
not one of them is like his or her fellow, [yet they all still come from the
same place]. (Mishnah Sanhedrin
4:5)
May we always remember what brings us
together every moment of our lives.
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