The Untranslatable Virtue
In Parashat Re’eh we encounter a passage that is the source of one of Judaism’s most majestic institutions, the principle of tzedaka:
If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your poor brother. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he lacks.… Give generously to him and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open-handed towards your brothers and towards the poor and needy in your land.” (Deut. 15:7–11)
Note that the passage does not use the word tzedaka, despite the fact that the root TZ-D-K is one of Deuteronomy’s key words, appearing eighteen times. Nor is it explicitly about tzedaka as such. Instead it is about Shemitta, the seventh year in which debts were cancelled. We will explain below why this is so.
The broad principle of tzedaka lies at the heart Judaism’s understanding of mitzvot bein adam leḥavero, the duties we have to other people. It appears in a key passage in Genesis, the only place in which the Torah explains why God singled out Abraham to be the founder of a new faith:
Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him so that he will instruct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right [tzedaka] and just [mishpat], so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what He has promised him.” (Gen. 18:17–19)
The “way of the Lord” is defined here by two words, tzedaka and mishpat. They are both forms of justice, but are quite different in their logic. Mishpat means retributive justice. It refers to the rule of law, through which disputes are settled by right rather than might. Law distinguishes between innocent and guilty. It establishes a set of rules, binding on all, by means of which the members of a society act in such a way as to pursue their own interests without infringing on the rights and freedoms of others. Few civilisations have robed law with greater dignity than Judaism. It is the most basic institution of a free society. It is no coincidence that in Judaism, God reveals Himself primarily in the form of laws, for Judaism is concerned not just with salvation (the soul in its relationship with God) but also with redemption (society as a vehicle for the Divine Presence). A law-governed society is a place of mishpat.
But mishpat alone cannot create a good society. To it must be added tzedaka, distributive justice. One can imagine a society which fastidiously observes the rule of law, and yet contains so much inequality that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, and many are left without the most basic requirements of a dignified existence. There may be high unemployment and widespread poverty. Some may live in palaces while others go homeless. That is not the kind of order that the Torah contemplates. There must be justice not only in how the law is applied, but also in how the means of existence – wealth as God’s blessing – are distributed. That is tzedaka.
Why then is it set out so briefly in the Torah itself? The answer is that the Torah is a set of timeless ideals that are to be realised in the course of time, and not all times are the same. The immediate focus of the Torah from the Exodus onwards is the creation of a society in the land of Israel – the society that actually emerged from the days of Joshua to the close of the biblical era. Its economy was primarily agricultural, as were all ancient economies. Therefore, the Torah sets out its programme of distributive justice in great detail in terms of an agrarian order.
There was the seventh year, when debts were cancelled. In the seventh year of service, Jewish slaves went free. There was the Jubilee in which ancestral lands returned to their original owners. There were the “corner of the field,” the “forgotten sheaf,” the “gleanings” of grain and wine harvest, and the tithes in the third and sixth years that were given to the poor. In these ways and others, the Torah established the first form of what in the twentieth century came to be known as a welfare state – with one significant difference. It did not depend on a state. It was part of society, implemented not by power but by moral responsibility, not by governments but by individuals in local communities. We see what this was like in practice in the book of Ruth, in which Boaz comes to the aid of two women in need. That is what a covenantal society should be. It was an exceptionally beautiful structure.
But the genius of the Torah is that it does not predicate its social vision on a single era or a particular economic order. Alongside the specifics is a broad statement of timeless ideals. That is the role of the verses quoted above, which served as the basis for rabbinic legislation on tzedaka. Tzedaka refers to more than gifts of produce. It includes gifts of money, the medium of exchange in all advanced societies whatever their economic base. That is why in post-biblical times, when Israel was no longer a nation in its own land, and most of its people no longer lived and worked on farms, tzedaka took on new forms, as gifts of money or food or other resources. The implementation changed but the principle remained the same.
Maimonides, in his halakhic code the Mishneh Torah, makes a fascinating observation: “We have never seen or heard of a Jewish community without a tzedaka fund.” He adds:
We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of tzedaka than any other positive commandment because tzedaka is the sign of the righteous, the seed of Abraham our father, as it is said, “For I have chosen him so that he will instruct his children…to do tzedaka” (Gen. 18:19). The throne of Israel and the religion of truth is upheld only through tzedaka, as it is said, “In tzedaka shall you be established” (Is. 54:14). Israel is redeemed only through tzedaka, as it is said, “Zion shall be redeemed with judgement and those that return by tzedaka” (Is. 1:27)…. All Jews and those attached to them are like brothers, as it is said, “You are sons of the Lord your God” (Deut. 14:1), and if a brother will not show mercy to his brother, who then will have mercy on him?1Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Matenot Aniyim 10:1.
Tzedaka was thus, both in ideal and reality, constitutive of Jewish community life, the moral bond between Jew and Jew (though it should be noted that Jewish law also obligates Jews to give tzedaka to non-Jews under the rubric of darkhei shalom, the “ways of peace”2Tosefta, Gittin 3:13.). It is foundational to the concept of covenantal society: society as an ethical enterprise is constructed on the basis of mutual responsibility.
Thus far, deliberately, I have left the word tzedaka untranslated. It cannot be translated, and this is not accidental. Civilisations differ from one another in their structure of ideals, even their most fundamental understandings of reality. They are not different ways of saying or doing the same things, mere garments, as it were, covering the same basic modes of existence. If we seek to understand what makes a civilisation distinctive, the best place to look is at the words that are untranslatable.
Tzedaka cannot be translated because it joins together two concepts that in other languages are opposites, namely, charity and justice. Suppose, for example, that I give someone £100. Either he is entitled to it or he is not. If he is, then my act is a form of justice. If he is not, it is an act of charity. In English (as with the Latin terms caritas and iustitia) a gesture of charity cannot be an act of justice, nor can an act of justice be described as charity. Tzedaka is therefore an unusual term, because it means both.
The idea of tzedaka arises from the theology of Judaism, which insists on the difference between possession and ownership. Ultimately, all things are owned by God, Creator of the world. What we possess, we do not own – we merely hold it in trust for God. The clearest example is the provision in Leviticus: “The land must not be sold permanently because the land is Mine; you are merely strangers and temporary residents in relation to Me” (Lev. 25:23).
If there were absolute ownership, there would be a difference between justice (what we are bound to give others) and charity (what we give others out of generosity). The former would be a legally enforceable duty, the latter, at best, the prompting of benevolence or sympathy. In Judaism, however, because we are not owners of our property but merely guardians on God’s behalf, we are bound by the conditions of trusteeship, one of which is that we share part of what we have with others in need. Hence the following unique law: “Someone who does not wish to give tzedaka or an appropriate amount of tzedaka may be compelled to do so by a Jewish court of law.”3Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Matenot Aniyim 7:10.
Charity is always voluntary. Tzedaka is compulsory. Therefore tzedaka does not mean charity. What would be seen as charity in other legal systems is, in Judaism, a strict requirement of the law, enforceable by the courts.
The nearest English equivalent to tzedaka is the phrase that came into existence alongside the idea of a welfare state, namely, social justice (significantly, Friedrich Hayek regarded the concept of social justice as incoherent and self-contradictory4Friedrich Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty: The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973).). Behind both is the idea that no one should be without the basic requirements of existence, and that those who have more than they need must share some of that surplus with those who have less. This is fundamental to the kind of society the Israelites were charged with creating, namely, one in which everyone has a basic right to a dignified life and equal worth as a citizen in the covenantal community under the sovereignty of God.
With its combination of charity and justice, tzedaka is a unique institution. It is deeply humanitarian, but it could not exist without the essentially religious concepts of divine ownership and social covenant. The prophet Jeremiah says of King Josiah, “He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is this not to know Me? says the Lord” (Jer. 22:16). To know God is to act with justice and compassion, to recognise His image in other people, and to hear the silent cry of those in need.