Re'eh

Re'eh - Maureen Kendler 

Maureen is Head of Educational Programming at the London School of Jewish Studies. She teaches adults across the community, and was named Educator of The Year by the London Jewish Cultural Centre in 2004.

Re'eh begins with a somewhat frustrated note on God's behalf: "Look, I set before you  this day a blessing and a curse." (Deut. 11:26) The blessing comes if the people listen, the curse comes if they do not. On the one hand there are aspirational aims  for the people to avoid idolatry and destroy everything to do with it, and at the same time an understanding that this is never going to be achieved.  And poverty will be a consequence of this.

Chapter 15 begins by saying "surely" there won't be any poverty because "surely" the people will listen to the commandments. But in verse 7 of this chapter, instructions are given as to how to treat the "evyon may'achad achechah", the needy man, one of your brothers", and the next few verses state in the most emphatic language possible that we must not harden our hearts or try to wriggle out of helping our needy brothers and must not resent doing so. Rashi (11^th century commentator) warns this will result in ourselves becoming needy. Verse 11 states this in the starkest fashion: "Ki lo yechdal evyon mikerev ha'araetz..." "the poor will never cease out of the land."

Presented as a bald fact, this must be one of the most distressing verses in the Torah - an everlasting curse, however idealistic we are, however boundless our philanthropy,  poverty is here to stay.

And poverty follows the Jews along their journey, paralleled with exhortations to give charity to end that poverty.

While I was discussing a programme for the recent  "Make Poverty History" campaign with a colleague, she misquoted it as "Make History Poverty"  - an error which made us laugh  but could indeed sum up much of Jewish history. Shalom Aleichem's Tevye raises his fist to God to thunder forth - immortalised in Fiddler On The Roof - whether it would spoil some "vast eternal plan ... if he were a wealthy man?" Perhaps God's silent answer is: yes. 

The Talmud sometimes attempts to dignify having no money and constantly warns of the dangers of being rich: "Poverty becomes a daughter of Jacob like a red ribbon on a white horse." (Chagiga 9a)  Anzia Yezierska, a Jewish immigrant to America in the early twentieth century used "Red Ribbon On A White Horse" as the title of her autobiography,  which bitterly chronicles her pious father's addiction to poverty, with his insistence  on its nobility. Yezierska battles against poverty furiously yet when she does finally acquire  wealth, somehow her fighting "Jewish" spirit dies with it. 

Michael Gold, in  his novel of the same period Jews Without Money, assumes all Jews everywhere are dirt-poor, and that his task in the world was to align himself forever with the poor and dispossessed, to fight for their cause.

Poverty is seen by the rabbinic commentators as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience. But its ubiquity must also facilitate our compassion. Rashi understands Chapter 15, verse 8, with its rather oddly phrased Hebrew "Ki potoach tiphtach et yadecha" - literally "opening you shall open your hand" that one has to help out the  needy again and again. This problem is not going to go away, and it must act as a clarion call for our action.

Michael Gold writes in memory of his deeply religious mother: ‘Mother! I must remain faithful to the poor because I cannot be faithless to you. I believe in the poor because I  have known you! The world must be made gracious for the poor. Momma! You taught me that!'