Israel’s Vocation for Social Justice: Biblical Tzedakah uMishpat Noam Zion Noam Zion, Hartman Institute, [email protected] – excerpted form from Jewish Giving in Comparative Perspectives: History and Story, Law and Theology, Anthropology and Psychology. Book One: From Each According to One’s Ability: Duties to Poor People from the Bible to the Welfare State and Tikkun Olam Previous Books: A DIFFERENT NIGHT: The Family Participation Haggadah By Noam Zion and David Dishon A DIFFERENT LIGHT: Hanukkah Seder and Anthology including Profiles in Contemporary Jewish Courage By Noam Zion A Day Apart: Shabbat at Home By Noam Zion and Shawn Fields-Meyer A Night to Remember: Haggadah of Contemporary Voices Mishael and Noam Zion www.haggadahsrus.com

Legal Advocacy and the Exploitation of the Stranger “The Judge of the Whole Earth” – God’s Punitive Role in tzedakah umishpat The Famous Foursome of the Exploited and the Neglected “The widows, the orphans, the resident aliens, and the impoverished” The Royal Mandate and its Democratization Justice and Hospitality: From Prevention of Injustice to Provision of Needs

Appendices: A Modern Sarah: The Mother of a Social Activist from Ceylon

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Preface: A Protest Song and a Personal Prayer In a compelling protest song and personal lament, the folksinger Billie Holiday sings: “Them that's got shall get, them that's not shall lose, so the Bible says and it still is news, Momma may have and Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got its own, that's got its own."

"God Bless the Child" was written by Billie Holiday and the Jewish jazz songwriter, Arthur Herzog, Jr., in 1939 as the United States began to emerge from its worst Depression. The song has been connected to Billie Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. She recalls an angry argument with her mother over money and her childhood resentment at her dependence on her parents’ largesse. She laments the way the world and perhaps God distributes wealth arbitrarily and unequally. The haves and the have-nots are eternally separated into those with and those without blessed material resources. The distinction disregards one's economic effort or moral merit. There is no human solidarity even within the family circle, but only self-reliance. For her the Bible offers no comfort - neither teaching human charity nor demanding justice. God offers no more solace than her parents do. Her pain is genuine, her description of how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in the wealthiest capitalist country in the world is often accurate, but her attribution to the Bible - whether Hebrew or Christian - of such callousness to the poor is grossly off base as this whole study shows. Billie Holiday has quoted the New Testament correctly. “For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.” (Matthew 13:12, but also Matthew 25:28-29, Luke 8:18, Mark 4:25)

But her interpretation belies everything taught in the New Testament about charity and material goods, for example, “Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the earth.” Most commentators read this verse in its context as a parable about spiritual grace, not financial blessings. When it comes to Divine grace, the Christian God is, according to what the Calvinists teach regarding predestination, wholly arbitrary in distributing salvation. However in the face of poverty Jesus and his disciples are filled with compassion for sinners. They do not seek to distribute material goods according spiritual or ethical deserts. Biblical and rabbinic traditions preach that God does reward and punish according to merit, but that does not sanctify the existing social and economic power structure. Humans are called upon to repair that broken and corrupt world and in the meantime one must show compassion to those who suffer, not to imitate Job’s “comforters” who try to compel him to take the blame for his arbitrary fate or to confess that God in his inscrutable wisdom has divided blessings and curses in the world according to some plan. Theology must be mobilized, not to justify what is, but to construct religious narratives that motivate compassionate giving and doing justice, tikkun olam. In response to the suffering of the poor, the indifference of the well-to-do, and the exploitative nature of societal structures, those marginalized will continue to resonate with Billie Holiday's sad cynicism about religion. In this book I hope we can correct Billie Holiday’s misimpression of the Bible and its religious traditions, but it is cooperative efforts to repair social reality – more than any fine sermon – that may restore hope. It is my prayer that acts of human kindness and visions of social justice, human dignity and interdependence 2

elicited by the religious traditions described in this trilogy, not only inspire some people to emulate them but also comfort those who feel alienated and abandoned in a cruel world, and who accuse God of having sealed their fate.

Biblical Images of God and their Implications for Aiding the Needy The Biblical and Rabbinic visions of poverty and its alleviation or even its elimination emerge from the foundational narratives of Israel. Therefore, the vocation and the memory, the Divine choice and the historical fate of Israel urge the community to reach both inward to show solidarity within but also outward to the edges of societal power - the orphan, widow and beyond to the stranger – so as to include all of them in the inner circle of brotherly love. But translating that core message into welfare institutions and laws, into character education, and into motivations interwoven into the religious identity structures of the giver and the society are surprisingly variegated in the Bible, rabbinic and Christian traditions. The identity narratives of Israel are multiple and as they diverge they inspire different narratives for helping the other, different mechanisms and different priorities in society’s policies of economic and social justice. The Torah has made its duties to the poor central to its identity, so there is much to study and compare among its various approaches. These models of giving to the needy may be categorized by their institutional delivery systems or by their theological motifs. Biblical legislation uses varied mechanisms to address human need. For example, consider the monarchy. Royalty may establish judicial institutions and legislate to care for the weak and save them from those who are stronger. But when those institutions are corrupted or compromised, then the monarch may intervene directly in the judicial system or the economic system to rescue the exploited by overturning decisions or proclaim cancellation of debts and liberation of slaves. If the threat is to the whole society from outside – conquest, oppressive tribute, or persecution by an aggressive empire, the monarch must try to rescue the weak i.e. his whole nation by war. That too is a matter of justice including economic justice. For instance, David rescued Israel from the Philistine oppressors whose tribute weighed heavily on Israel, but he himself was an oppressor of his own people. Therefore, Nathan the prophet had to appeal to the king himself to confess and to change his behavior. He does so by referring to a stolen sheep in a parable whereby the animal represented Batsheva whom David had stolen from Uriah the Hittite. Nathans comes to the king as the apex of justice, as the ultimate court of appeals (II Sam. 12). Yet ironically the monarch was the thief and murderer himself. So the prophet plus the monarch together form a coordinated mechanism for advocacy for the neglected and mistreated. However, institutional arrangements are not the subject of this book as such. Rather we seek to categorize the ideologies of giving, the implicit metaphors and motives of helping the poor, the worldview in which duties to the poor are embedded in the identity of the community and its God. It is Israel’s foundational identity as a chosen people with a vocation, a holy people living in a sacred economy on Divinely owned and Divinely blessed land, and the memory of Egypt that shape Israel’s biography and, hence, their intuitive relationship to the poor and the strangers who remind them of themselves during the formative Exodus era. Since Israel’s identity is indivisible from God’s identity, theology is as important as history. God functions as a substratum on which all the duties to the needy are constructed. The first theocentric motif essential for understanding the duties to the poor is “God as king and judge.” The term judge (shofet) can refer both to the judicial function and the political–military 3

one, such as the judges in the Book of Judges. The narrative logic is that the human king, anointed by God, and the judge, ruling on God’s law, will function as God's representatives on earth in order to promote impartial universal justice and political, economic and social order. That ruler’s Divine role is explicit in the royal Psalm 72: God grant your judgments (mishpat) to the king and give your justice (tzedakah) to the king’s son. Judge your people in justice and your poor with judgment. (Psalm 72:1-2)i

Here the Tanakh participates directly in the tradition of the ancient Near East that the king is responsible for executing impartial justice. But any judicial or political order has its discontents, those marginalized, so the monarch whether Divine or human must guarantee that the system of justice includes the strangers and the poor who have no other advocates, no protective clan, hence no go’el, no familial brother or father, to argue their case. Defending the poor from oppression is the key to the glory of a king: All the kings will worship him, all the nations will serve him, because he has rescued the destitute from the hand of the powerful and the poor who had no helper. (Psalm 72:12, according to the Septuagint)

In Proverbs the advice to rulers is: Open your mouth for the dumb, for the rights of all unfortunate. Speak up, judge righteously, defend the cause of the poor and the needy. (Proverbs 31:8-9)ii

The Bible mentions three other institutional representatives of God the king on earth besides the monarch: the priest, the prophet, and the people. The priest (called uniquely in the Deuteronomy, “a priest-levi”) often staffs the judicial system (Deut. 17:18; Deut. 34:10). The prophetic role is to remind the king, the judges and the people of Israel to execute this ideal of justice, usually referred to as tzedakah umishpat. As God’s prophet one must advocate before society for the oppressed. Thus the prophet Nathan speaks out to the monarch in the Batsheva affair (II Samuel 12); Elijah protests the case of the theft of the vineyard and the murder of Navot by Ahab and Jezebel’s manipulation of the courts (I Kings 21). However, as Yochanan Muffs, my teacher par excellence at the Jewish Theological Seminary, taught, the prophet also appears before God the supreme judge and ruler as an intercessor for mercy. Thus Abraham, as a prophet, prays to heal the king Avimelekh (Gen. 20:7) and Moshe prays for God to forgive the Israel’s sins in the desert (Exodus 32 and Numbers 13).1 1

“The prophet is the instrument of divine severity, the attribute of divine justice. But ...the prophet has another function: He is also an independent advocate to the heavenly court who attempts to rescind the evil decree by means of the only instruments at his disposal, prayer and intercession. He is first the messenger of the divine court to the defendant, but his mission boomerangs back to the sender. Now, he is no longer the messenger of the court; he becomes the agent of the defendant, attempting to mitigate the severity of the decree.” Prophetic prayer is the most characteristic indication of the prophet's total intellectual independence and freedom of conscience. The divine strong hand does not lobotomize the prophet's moral and emotional personality. Prophecy does not tolerate prophets who lack heart, who are emotionally anesthetized. Quite the contrary, one could even argue that, historically speaking, the role of intercessor is older than the messenger aspect of prophecy. After all, Abraham is not a prophetic messenger, yet he is considered a prophet nonetheless. His prophetic nature manifests itself only in his prayer. In Gen 20:7, we hear God's command to Avimelekh concerning Sarah, Abraham's wife: "And now return the woman, for her husband is a prophet, and he will pray on your behalf, and you will be cured." There is no better example of prayer and petition than that of Abraham in the case of Sodom, which distinguishes itself in its unbridled audacity against heaven: "Shall the Judge of the world not do justice?" (Gen 18:25). (Yochanan Muffs (2), “Who Will Stand in the Breach?” 9, 11)

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The story of Abraham advocating for Sodom before God, whom he challenges to live up to the mandate to be the “judge of the whole earth,” introduces for the first time in the Bible the dominant Biblical motif of the Divine and by analogy the human king as duty-bound to seek justice. Abraham as founder of the people is chosen, according to God’s interior monologue in this tale, to found a people whose whole calling is a way of life based on tzedakah umishpat that benefits all humankind. The beneficiaries of tzedakah are not only the poor but anyone who might suffer from injustice. Poverty should be understood under this motif in political and judicial terms. The Biblical calling of Abraham and the prophetic rebuke to Israel’s corrupt upper classes relate to the royal mandate , Divine and human, to bring justice, tzedakah umishpat, to the whole society, especially those incapable of defending themselves. While this narrative is applied to the poor for they are most often exploited, it relates mainly to providing legal redress, not material maintenance. The prophetic critique of poverty identifies the wealthy and the government rulers as exploiters of the economic situation of the poor and defenseless - whether debt slaves, wage earners dependent on daily wages to survive, orphans, widows, and resident aliens who lack family members to advocate their cause, or seasonal agricultural workers. It is God's overall responsibility to care for the justice and the needs of these weaker members of the society. But that duty devolves on the king with the prophet calling the king to do his duty. Nevertheless, according to Genesis 18, this is originally the calling of God’s whole people, Abraham’s students and descendants. Each individual Jew must pursue justice and show compassion.

Abraham’s Calling: To Teach Tzedakah uMishpat (Genesis 18: 18-19) I have singled him out [chosen him to found a people] so that he may instruct his children and his household [or posterity] after him to keep the way of Adonai, doing what is just2 (tzedakah) and right (mishpat) in order that God may bring about for Abraham what was promised him. (Genesis 18: 18-19) “Imagine a ‘Mensch-Israel’ (Mensch-Jissroel) who dwells in freedom among the nations and aspires to his ideal. Each son of Israel serves as a model priest dignified in his pursuit of justice and love. He spreads among the nations – not ‘Israelness’ [Yiddishkeit] – for that is forbidden – but rather pure humanity (Menschlichkeit)! What an impetus could this power for the education of humanity and its progress.” - S. R. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters on Judaism, 62 (Hebrew) "Judaism's central tactic to achieve tikkun olam is to create an experimental community - the children of Israel - seeking to care for its own. This would show an example, a human model, of how to move toward the final goal, step by step, without destroying the good that exists." - Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, 124 “[The Hebrew Bible] is not a history of the Jewish people but the story of God's quest for the righteous man.” Because of ‘the failure’ of the human race as a whole to be righteous, it is Abraham’s task to “satisfy that quest by making every man righteous.” 2

English translations of tzedek use both Latin and Anglo Saxon roots: (1) justus (Latin) from jus = law (dikaioun in Greek), subsequently used to signify “justify” and then “punish”; (2) rectus (Latin) and right (Anglo Saxon) mean upright, rightful or legitimate, or conforming to a standard, such as a right angle or a just right; (3) regere (Latin) means regular or to rule, hence rex or regal for king

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- A.J. Heschel, The Wisdom of Heschel, 175

The first use of the term “tzedakah” in the Bible is in Genesis 18-19 in the tale of Abraham, Lot and Sodom. “Tzedakah” here has nothing to do with poverty as such or with the allocation of funds, but rather the term tzedakah umishpat is used and is identified with legal activism directed towards the delinquent authorities who have not executed properly their mandate to maintain justice, judicial justice. Abraham appeals to God to live up to the role of “judge of the whole earth,”iii and not punish the innocent along with the guilty. No other Abrahamic or Genesis tale develops this mission to advocate justice3 for those who need it. Actually from the context in Gen. 18 it seems that Abraham is really pleading for mercy, not justice.4 Whenever this passage in Genesis 18: 18-19 may have been composed or edited, it now functions within the Biblical corpus as the seminal text containing motifs more fully embodied in the prophets. It announces the central terminology of tzedakah umishpat that specifies the role of the ruler in governing society. This phrase becomes the rhetorical basis for the classical prophetsiv to advocate the case of the exploited poor against their Jewish rulers. By invoking these attributes of God, the suppliants in the Book of Psalms build a case for Divine intervention so as to live up to the complimentary adjectives with which God has been praised. The Royal Psalms, in particular, praise the Davidic dynasty and God’s rule of universal justice, but thereby their praise is covert act of lobbying God to appear, to rescue those uttering these praises and render judgment on to the whole earth as befits the “judge of the whole world” whom Abraham first named.v Surprisingly, the moral mission of Abraham and Sarah was not revealed in Genesis 12 when they were first sent on their way to an undefined promised land in hope of a glorious future as progenitors of a great nation that will be a blessing to the whole world.5 But why does God want to create a great nation? Great in what realm? Why choose Abraham? vi In fact, why does God choose a human partner at all? The answers are kept hidden until later. Besides Abraham’s obedience to an amorphous mission, the praiseworthy behaviors of this founding parent seem to focus on his hospitality to his orphaned nephew Lot, his peacemaking compromises with Lot, and even his hospitality to poor nomads (who turn out to be angels coming to announce Isaac’s birth) as well as his military 3

The Biblical uses of tzedek may be summarized as follows: (1) judicial process involving pursuing justice by investigation, judging on whose side the law is (Gen. 38:26: Job 4:17;40:8) or judging a person and acquitting him, i.e. declaring him to be tzaddik, i.e., innocent (Gen. 18:22-32; Dt. 16:17; 25:1; Ezekiel 18) or executing justice in the sense of retribution or rewarding good actions (I Sam. 26:13; II Sam. 19:27-29). Forensic justice may be corrupted by lack of objectivity (Ecclesiastes 3:16; 5:7; Dt. 1:16-17). (2) Right order of the world which is a royal and Divine mandate (Psalm 96:13; 98:9). (3) Saving acts which may reflect objective justice or partisanship for one's covenantal client, vassal as well as well as bringing the messianic savior (Isaiah 44:28; 45:13: I Samuel 12:7; Judges 5:11: Jeremiah 33:15 on tzemach tzedek. One may save Israel by punishing justly its enemies and repaying its innocence. In Christianity one may save sinners by acquitting them, thus the multiple meanings of justice are combined in use. (4) Covenantal loyalty and faithfulness, constancy (Hosea 2:19-22; Isaiah 48:1) (5) Social and legal justice tzedakah umishpat is a royal mandate (II Sam. 8:15; I Kg 10:9) (See "Justice" in Anchor Bible Dictionary V 724-736) 4 Speaking analogously, Abraham is the first Clarence Darrow, the first American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, who defended often admittedly guilty people in the name of universal principles of justice. 5

Alternatively the text may be read as: All nations will bless themselves by invoking his example as a model nation.

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venture to defeat four wicked kings and to redeem their captives including Lot.vii The revelation of God’s mission - which was not mentioned in Abraham’s calling (Gen. 12) - first appears in an internal monologue of God (Gen. 18:19). It functions as a heavenly introspective prologue to God’s extended conversation with Abraham about the crisis over the wicked city of Sodom. The Torah makes explicit the purpose of the Divine mission of Abraham and his descendants in the preface to Abraham’s daring defense of the people of Sodom in the face of possible Divine injustice and his subsequent appeal for Divine mercy on their behalf. This seminal text defines not only the king’s or the prophet’s role as concerned with justice, but the Jewish mission of Abraham as founder of a great nation. Not only has God commissioned a leader for one generation but also a people that must be educated to its task generation after generation. The defining marker of the Jewish calling and raison d’etre for Jewish national existence is to follow the distinctive Divine way of care – tzedakah umishpat. Abraham was chosen not only to pursue in this cause, but to teach his descendants “the way of God, the doing of tzedakah umishpat” (Genesis 18:19). In Jeremiah we hear that same path of God that all the people must follow, but it has been sadly forgotten by the poor and by the wealthy alike: “I thought these poor folk act foolishly, for they do not know the way of Adonai, the rules (mishpat) of their God. So I shall go to the wealthy ....Surely they will know the way of Adonai, but they as well had broken the yoke.” (Jeremiah 5:4-5)

Legal Advocacy and the Exploitation of the Stranger In Gen. 18 in the first narrative to mention the calling of Abraham’s people and to invent the attribute of God as, “judge of the whole world”, the client in need of justice is surprisingly not God’s people or Abraham’s, but the most wicked city of the Bible. Sodom, Abraham’s first client, receives its day in court with a self-appointed public defender (or, perhaps implicitly, God has appointed Abraham to this task). Ironically the client is not a poor but a rich society. They are themselves exploiters of the poor, of angels who appear to them to be defenseless travelers and hence tempting victims. Instead of placing Sodom in the docket, it is God who is on the defensive. Abraham plays the prophetic role of rebuking unjust rulers, not against the wicked and cruel rulers of Sodom, but against God. In the context of Genesis 18 the meaning of this phrase tzedakah umishpat is tied paradoxically to the people of Sodom in two opposed ways. First, the people of Sodomviii are the most egregious violators of the basic universal justice and benevolence owed to needy strangers.ix Strangers, gerim, are a subcategory of the Bible’s proverbial most needy and poverty-struck people, the ger yatom v’almanah (stranger, orphan and widow). While Abraham and Lot welcome strangers and seek to protect them, Sodomites refuse the strangers and instead seek to commit sexual violence against them and against Lot himself who is also a resident alien. Lot tries to dissuade his adoptive city from committing this heinous crime, but the Sodomites threaten and accuse him of being a meddling foreigner, a resident alien stranger trying to act like a judge and tell the natives how to behave. (“Will one who merely comes to reside [lagur from ger] try to judge [us]? Now we will do more evil to him than those [other strangers who have come to visit]” – Genesis 19:9). Abraham had just redeemed – along with his nephew Lot - these same people of Sodom, their wives and property when they were war captives. He could have taken these people as his slaves after conquering the four kings, but he simply liberated them and refused compensation for his part of the military expedition (Genesis 14:16-17, 21-24). Yet these people of Sodom show no 7

concern for other foreigners now at their mercy. Abraham embodies the way of tzedakah umishpat by selfless caring for strangers – the hospitality toward those who turn out to be three angels - and for freeing the human and material possessions of his Sodom neighbors after the war. Lot, as Abraham’s nephew, embodies in his actions tzedakah umishpat not only in caring for strangers but also in protesting at great personal risk against injustice to them by the authorities – the people of Sodom. He is the first "righteous gentile" and his tale directly inspired the Dutch Calvinist family that hid my father-in-law during the Holocaust.6 Nevertheless Abraham, the ancient Clarence Darrow, takes up the case of the people of Sodom who he describes as potential victims of indiscriminate judicial malfeasance. Abraham’s bold and seemingly foolhardy rhetoric makes it seem as if God’s intention is to punish innocent and guilty together. In rebuking God Abraham argues that that God is unjust and God has violated His mandate as Judge of the whole earth. Abraham is impudent (hutzpadik) enough to judge God. Similarly when Lot rebuked the people of Sodom, they argued that Lot had impudently taken it upon himself to judge his hosts. Although the Torah does not let us know if God actually told Abraham that his mandate is to teach “God’s way of tzedakah umishpat,” implicitly Abraham is using this calling to give him the standing to accuse God of violating this mandate. In response God surprises a fitfully daring and sometimes reluctant Abraham, by welcoming that challenge and submitting Divine behavior to the measure of an objective moral standard.7 Thus, God is held accountable to Divine ideals by a human lawyer. By contrast, the people of Sodom viewed Lot’s advocacy of justice for the stranger as an inexcusable presumption by one who is himself a stranger. They reason that his hutzpah is grounds for mob violence against him. The case of Sodom’s bloodthirsty cruelty then vindicates God from Abraham’s initial challenge. However, it is God himself who vindicates Abraham for presenting his challenges since God welcomed them and treated them with moral seriousness and judicial objectivity. The principles involved transcend the ad hominem argument that God is a hypocrite claiming falsely to be just. The divine decree can therefore be defended as arising from a God that genuinely cares about justice. In conclusion, tzedakah umishpat is a Divine concern for justice for innocent victims - whether traveling strangers or innocent residents swept up in the destruction of a wicked city. It requires that unjust rulers exploiting the vulnerable be rebuked and judged for their malfeasance by God’s representatives on earth. Implicitly, Lot’s spontaneous behavior, both in offering hospitality to the stranger and in arguing for their defense, has proven that Abraham has more or less successfully taught Lot “the way of God” through the principle of tzedakah umishpat. This is true even though Lot goes overboard in offering his daughters as compensatory rape offerings to the bloodthirsty crowd demanding his guests’ bodies. Sodom condemns itself by rejecting Lot’s judgment and seeking to kill him, while God vindicates his role by welcoming Abraham’s judgment and assuring Abraham that he has not crossed the line that will put this life in danger.

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The Wassink family was a Bible-reading family and they were motivated by their pastor to take in Jews and others whom the Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands sought. While the Nazis searched the Wassink house looking in vain for some eleven hidden fugitives, the mother of the family gathered her children and read them the tale of the people of Sodom who sought the doorway into Lot’s home to attack the strangers he had welcomed. The guests turned out to be powerful angels that struck the Sodomites with blindness preventing them from finding e entrance to the house. Thus all the underground refugees were rescued. 7

In Genesis 18 God mentors Abraham as an advocate for human justice by allowing his power to be limited and criticized by an independent standard of universal justice. Of course, God passes this time and Sodom fails. But God is not above the benchmark of justice.

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The Abrahamic tradition of “courtroom advocacy” in favor of the downtrodden reappears in prophetic and rabbinic sources as well. The prophets often use the language of God appearing in court or the prophet arguing a case for the poor as in Isaiah 3:13-14: Adonai stands up to plead a cause, God rises to champion peoples. Adonai will bring this charge against the elders and officers of God’s people: It is you who have ravaged the vineyard; That which was robbed from the poor is in your houses. How dare you crush my people and grind the faces of the poor.

The Rabbis develop further this emphasis on judicial justice and God's advocacy of the needy: "[Judges!] Do not recognize persons: "Do not say this one is rich while this one is poor... this deserving one should sit beneath [me] and do not have it that the poor stand and that the rich sit. ...God stands with the poor and not with those who oppress them.” (Midrash Tannaim on Deut. 16:19; see Epistle of James 2:2-4) “Anyone who subverts court justice in Israel violates the prohibition, do not do iniquity in judgment (Leviticus 19:15), and if the victim was a stranger [resident alien or convert], that violates two prohibitions, do not subvert the judgment of a ger (Deut. 24:17), and the victim is also an orphan that violates three: the judgment of a ger and an orphan.” (Maimonides, Laws of Sanhedrin 20:12)

Since the disadvantage is almost always that of the poor, even in physical appearance in court, Maimonides legislates as follows: “When two people come to court to be judged, one dressed in expensive garments and one in disgraceful garments, then the judge should say to the honorable one: Either dress him like you as long as you are arguing with him in court or dress like him - until you are equal. Then you can stand to be judged.” (Maimonides, Laws of Sanhedrin 21:2)

The basic goal for Abraham and the rabbis is not to use the courts to favor the poor, but to equalize their appearance in court, so each may be judged impartially. This applies even if someone is “poor” in moral or religious practice: “When two people come to court to be judged before you, one kosher [in moral and religious practice] and one wicked, who is thought to be liar, do not say to yourself: I will tilt the case against the wicked one [even without further investigation], since the kosher one [with integrity] does not change his words [lies]. For about this it says: Do not tilt the judgment of the poor in their case (Exodus 23:6) even if he is poor in mitzvot – do not subvert his case.” (Maimonides, Laws of Sanhedrin 20:5)

“The Judge of the Whole Earth” – God’s Punitive Role in tzedakah umishpat Abraham and Lot help the needy wanderer and warn society’s powerful judges about their responsibility to refrain from injustice. That is the Jewish calling. But God goes a step beyond this role, for God is a judge,8 not just an advocate or a caretaker. God’s justice requires 8

The Wisdom Literature Image as God as Judge: No to Bribes and No to Exploitation of the Poor “Do not try to bribe him, for he will not accept it, And do not rely on an ill-gotten sacrifice;

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punishment in the Sodom case and many cases thereafter. To punish evil doers who exploit the vulnerable unchampioned strangers and poor of society is justice. God justly wipes out Sodom but only after passing Abraham’s test of judicial discretion. Tzedakah umishpat is the task of those meant to rule as monarchs appointed by God, not just to teach and to protest and to offer shelter as do Abraham and his family. Tzedakah umishpat has much to do with the societal justice promoted by the ruler in the Ancient Near Eastx as the Bible scholar Moshe Weinfeld has shown.xi This term is later used to describe King David’s ideal reign.xiixiii Abraham will be the forefather of kings (Gen. 17:6), so the stock description of the royal calling appears already in Genesis 18 predictively. Human kings ought to become stand-ins for God who is concerned with punishing injustice associated with economic and legal exploitation. In many laws in Exodus and Deuteronomy we hear an echo of the paradigmatic outcry of injustice from the victims of Sodom: Adonai said: “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin is so grievous! I will go down and see if they have indeed done as the cry indicates. If so, I will wipe them out! If not, then I will know. (Genesis 18: 20-21).

We also hear warnings that the God of justice will swiftly punish Jews for causing an outcry from the vulnerable in their own society, recalling the outcry that emerged from the powerless Hebrews in Egypt: Do not take advantage of the stranger and oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Do not abuse any widow or orphan. Because if you should abuse them, then they will certainly cry out to Me and I will just as certainly hear them. Then I will become angry and kill you with the sword, so that your wives will become widows and your children orphans. (Exodus 22: 21-24) If you should take your fellow’s garment in pledge for a loan, you must give it back to him before the sun sets. After all, it is his only clothing, all that he has to cover his bare skin – what else can he sleep in? Consequently, if he cries out to Me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate. (Exodus 22:26-27)9

For the Lord is a judge, And there is no partiality with him. He will show no partiality against the poor, But he will listen to the prayer of the man who is wronged. He will not disregard the supplication of the orphan, Or the widow, if she pours out her story. Do not the widow's tears run down her cheeks, While she utters her complaint against the man who has caused them to fall?” (Ben Sirach 35:12-15) If a man offers a sacrifice that was wrongfully obtained, it is blemished, And the gifts of sinful men are not acceptable. The Most High is not pleased with the offerings of ungodly men, And a man cannot atone for his sins with numerous sacrifices. The man who offers a sacrifice from the property of the poor Sacrifices a son before his father's eyes. Scanty fare is the living of the poor; The man who deprives them of it is a murderous man. The man who takes away his neighbor's living murders him, And the man who deprives a hired man of his wages is guilty of bloodshed. (Ben Sirach 34:18-22) 9

“And your eye be evil against your needy brother, and you give him nothing; and he cries unto the Lord against you” (Dt. 14:9).… One might think that if he cries out against you, a sin is charged against you, but if he does not cry out against you, no sin is charged against you; therefore the verse goes on to say, “And it be sin in you” (15:9)--in any event. If so, why does the verse end with “And he cry unto the Lord against you”? Because I (the Lord) will exact punishment more quickly in response to the one who cries out than to the one who does not cry out. .(Sifre Deut. 15)

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You shall not abuse a poor and destitute laborer, whether a fellow countryman or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. You must pay him his wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for he is poor and urgently depends on it; else he will cry to the Lord against you and you will incur guilt. (Deut. 24:14-15)10

As the Bible and Midrash scholar James Kugelxiv points out: “God is uniquely moved by human suffering”xv whether from his people or any stateless, family-less individuals. Not the acts of disorder and crime but the cry of the oppressed is what moves God. God dismisses for malfeasance judges and kingsxvi who do not live up to that standard. Thus, God is not merely the God of law and order who fights against chaos, but the God of compassion. That compassion generates a violent passion in demanding justice for the undefended. Therefore, God may threaten the earthly powers that be and shake up the status quo of a heartless political order. That same understanding permeates Nachmanides' passionate commentary (13th C. Spain) on the verse: Do not exploit the resident alien and oppress them, for you know that you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:20)

Nachmanides warns: “Don’t think that they have no rescuer from your hand, for you know that you were resident aliens in the land of Egypt and I saw their oppression that the Egyptians oppressed them and I took vengeance on them, for I see the tears of the exploited (dim’at ashukim) who have no comforter from the power of their exploiters. And I rescue every human being from those stronger than them. So too you shall not persecute a widow and orphan for I will hear their cries (Exodus 22:21-22), for all of these cannot rely on themselves, but on Me they can rely.”

As we saw, Abraham announces the motif of God as “the Judge of the whole earth, kol haaretz” and from there it leads in serpentine ways to the contemporary term tikkun olam, “Repairing the World” (where the late Rabbinic term for world – olam – replaces the Biblical term ha-aretz). Tikkun Olam has become a popular term used since the late 20th C. for social justice and societal reform. The evolution of this term and its varied narratives will be explored in our final chapter of this book. Already at this point we may note that however new the usage of tikkun olam for social justice is, its conceptual roots derive from the prophetic notion of tzedakah umishpat explored here. What makes this Abrahamic concern for justice a prototype of modern Tikkun Olam is both its universalism, its concept of a whole world, and its demand for human cooperation in the Divine process of fixing a broken or corrupted world. Abraham, the father of his nation, is chosen to fulfill this calling that defines his nation’s mission as a service to the universal goals of the universal Ruler. xvii This mission is a multi-generational task which requires Abraham to teach his offspring or anyone joining the people “the way of Adonai, the way of justice.” The nation is defined, not biologically, but behaviorally by following a “path,” which in rabbinic terminology is called halakha, literally, the way to go.

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This image of God as the advocate of the poor is the presumption of the Psalms of lament and complaint, e.g. in Psalm 82. How long will you judge falsely, showing favor to the guilty party? Give justice to the poor, the orphan; find in favor of the needy, the wretched. Save the poor and the lowly, rescue them from the wicked (Psalms 82: 2-4).

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The Famous Foursome of the Exploited and the Neglected The widows, the orphans, the resident aliens, and the impoverished. (Zechariah 7:9-10) The litmus test of prophetic justice is the treatment of famous foursome of poor and vulnerable social categories. They appear together in the Torah’s legal texts, in prophetic writingxviii and in the Psalms. Advocacy of justice is tied closely to God's role as the avenger of those who have no redeemer. Abraham Ibn Ezra (the 12th C. Spanish commentator) wandered in exile for decades after the invasion of Moslem Spain by radical Islamic forces.xix Perhaps for that reason he was so sensitive to the resident alien in the Bible. Ibn Ezra locates the structural weakness of the stranger (ger) in the lack of family support. Thus he derives the word “ger” from gargir – “a grain broken off from the branch.”xx That is why "the ger is powerless like the orphan and widow."xxi The ger "has no family, so any citizen can exploit him."xxii Therefore the judges must be warned to judge fairly even those without powerful patrons from big clans (Deuteronomy 27:19), for "if the judge distorts justice [of the normal well-connected citizen], they will complain and publicize the case, but the orphans, widow and ger have no power" to challenge the judge. Hence warnings and appeals to defend the legal rights of the orphan, widow and stranger abound in the Torah, Wisdom literature and in prophetic literature of tzedakah umishpat as well.xxiii In his book Justice Nicholas Wolterstorff explores the implications of this list and then asks what notion of justice is implied by comparing the opposed views of two Bible scholars Oliver O'Donovan and Walter Brueggemann. "The widows, the orphans, the resident aliens, and the impoverished (Zechariah 7:9-10) were the bottom ones, the low ones, the lowly... at the bottom of the social hierarchy, especially vulnerable to being treated with injustice. They were downtrodden, as our older English translations nicely put it. The rich and the powerful put them down, tread on them, trampled them. Rendering justice to them is often described as ‘lifting them up.’ (Psalm 147:6).” xxiv “[These] social classes are... usually disproportionately actual victims of injustice. Injustice is not equally distributed. The low ones enjoy those goods to which they have a right - food, clothing, voice, security, whatever - far less than do the high and mighty ones... For any society whatsoever, it is likely that those at the bottom are suffering the most grievous injustice. Here is why: Robbery and assault are events, episodes. If the victim of a robbery is a wealthy person, the robbery is an episode in a life that likely has been going quite nicely. By contrast, it is alltoo-likely that the daily condition of those at the bottom is unjust. Widows are burglarized and assaulted; episodes of injustice also occur in their lives. But in addition, their situation is all-too-often unjust, demeaning, impoverished, voiceless.” xxv

What forms of justice does the legal rhetoric of the Torah and of the prophet pursue?11 Wolterstorff suggests it is somewhere between a rectifying justice, which seeks judicial fairness, and redistributive justice that reallocates resources. Oliver O'Donovan in The Desire of the Nations (1996) argues that justice in the Bible is not about everyone getting 11

“The Hebrew word in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that is standardly translated into English as justice is "mishpat." The term is often paired with "tsedeqa," standardly translated as righteousness; "justice and righteousness." My own sense is that when the rhetorical context permits, "tsedeqa" is better rendered into present-day English as the right thing, or going right, or doing right. The word "righteous" is seldom used any more in ordinary speech. When it is, it suggests a person intensely preoccupied with his own moral character who has few "sins" to his debit; the connotation is of self-righteousness.” (Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice, 69)

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their due in accord with each member’s value in the social hierarchy, as in Aristotle, but about rectifying injustices. The Bible’s justice should not be confused with “a quite different conception of justice, classical and Aristotelian in inspiration, built on the twin notions of appropriateness and proportionate equality. Justice means receiving one's own due and maintaining social equilibrium. Mishpat is primarily a judicial performance. When 'judgment’ is present, it is not a state of affairs that obtains but an activity that is duly carried out. When it is absent, it is not imbalance or mal-distribution that is complained of but the lapsing of a judicial function that always needs to be exercised. So, for example, ...Isaiah in Jerusalem (6th C. BCE) demands that the citizens of Jerusalem ‘seek mishpat,’ which he explains as a commitment to giving judgment in the cause of the fatherless and litigating on behalf of the widow.”xxvi On the other hand, Walter Brueggemann argues that: “The intent of Mosaic justice is to redistribute social goods and social power; thus it is distributive justice. This justice recognizes that social goods and social power are unequally and destructively distributed in Israel's world (and derivatively in any social context), and that the well-being of the community requires that social goods and power to some extent be given up by those who have too much, for the sake of those who have not enough.”xxvii

Note the words “to some extent.” Even Brueggemann is not contending that the Bible seeks equal distribution of goods, but only that giving aid to the needy is part of the justice system along with judicial fairness. Some redistribution is necessary for social inclusion, while dignity is a goal that transcends a mere just distribution of material goods. "Israel understands itself ... as a community of persons bound in membership to each other, so that each person-as-member is to be treated well enough to be sustained as a full member of the community." xxviii

In any case, Nicholas Wolterstorff concludes persuasively that prophetic justice is concerned with social justice but not with economic equality or political justice involving the empowerment of marginalized groups to participate in the political process. In addition the prophets threaten the elites with retributive justice in which the downtrodden will be lifted up, while the haughty are brought low. In the Tanakh, as Wolterstorff notes, the prevalent metaphor is “the image of up and down”: “Some are at the top of the social hierarchy, some are at the bottom. Those at the bottom are usually not there because it is their fault. They are there because they are downtrodden. Those at the top trample the heads of the poor into the dust of the earth (Amos 2:7). When up and down are one's basic metaphors, the undoing of injustice will be described as lifting up those at the bottom.” God raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes. (Psalm 113:7) “[But] justice for the downtrodden requires casting down the ones who tread them down. The coming of justice can be a painful experience [for the unjust].” xxix

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The Royal Mandate: Justice, Protection of the Poor and Peace The concept and terminology of tzedakah umishpat is central to the Biblical royal mandate attributed to God, the Creator and Ruler, and to the kings of Israel.xxx King Solomon’s reign is idealized in Psalm 72. The ideal Davidic king of Psalm 72 who judges with tzedakah umishpat follows the tradition of the ideal king of the ancient Near East. The Davidic monarch will redeem the poor and suppress the exploiters. Surprisingly, however, the Davidic monarch's standing among other nations who are expected to bow to him, pray for him, send him gifts, and bless his God is justified in particular “because” the king rescues the needy who have no protector (Psalm 72: 11-19). As RaDaK, Rabbi David Kimchi, comments: “Therefore the nations will love him and serve him because they will see he is a just king” (on Psalm 72:11-12).xxxi Of Solomon. O God, endow the king with Your judgments (mishpat) , the king's son with Your righteousness (tzedkaha); that he may judge Your people rightly(b’tzedek), Your lowly ones, justly(b’mishpat). Let the mountains produce well-being (shalom) for the people, the hills, the reward of justice (b’tzedakah). Let him champion (judge- mishpat) the lowly among the people, deliver the needy folk, and crush those who wrong them (oshek - exploiter). (Psalm 72: 1-4) "Let all kings bow to him, and all nations serve him. For he saves the needy who cry out, the poor who have no helper. He protects the impoverished and the needy; He saves the lives of the needy. He redeems them from fraud (hamas) and evil plots; Their blood (their lives) are precious in God’s eyes [so God will protect and avenge them]. (Psalm 72: 12-14) Let him live ...pray for him always, bless him every day. May his name be eternal; while the sun lasts, may his name endure; let men invoke his blessedness upon themselves [See Genesis 22:18]; let all nations praise him. Blessed is Adonai God, God of Israel, who alone does wondrous things; Blessed is God’s glorious name forever; His glory fills the whole world. Amen and Amen: So end of the prayers of David, son of Jesse. (Psalm 72: 15, 17-20)

This Psalm celebrates the monarch who takes as a primary goal not empire building but defense of the needy from exploitation. It also harks back to God’s blessing to Abraham. It slightly reinterprets the original promise of God to Abraham that he will be "a blessing to all the families of the earth" (Gen. 12: 3, see Gen. 22:18). Now God the King offers a “blessedness that people may invoke upon themselves” (Psalm 72). The royal mandate to bring justice is reiterated by Jeremiah when he praises one monarch for living up to that ideal. “Ha! One who builds his house with unfairness and his upper chambers with injustice, Who makes his fellow man work without pay and does not give him his wages, Who thinks: I will build me a vast palace with spacious upper chambers, Provided with windows, Paneled in cedar, Painted with vermilion! Do you think you are more a king because you compete in cedar? Your father ate and drank and dispensed justice and equity (tzedakah umishpat). Then all went well with him.

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He upheld the rights of the poor and needy. Then all was well. That is truly heeding Me - declares Adonai. (Jeremiah 22:13-16)

By contrast, Jeremiah warns the son of the king that the abandonment of his father’s concern for the needy condemns the monarch’s son to death and shame for violence and abuse the innocent: But your eyes and your mind are only on ill-gotten gains, On shedding the blood of the innocent, on committing fraud and violence. Assuredly, thus said Adonai concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah: They shall not mourn for him, "Ah, brother! Ah, sister!" They shall not mourn for him, "Ah, lord! Ah, his majesty!" He shall have the burial of an ass, dragged out and left lying outside the gates of Jerusalem.” (Jeremiah 22:17-19)

As the Bible scholar Yisrael Knohl teaches: the primary role of the messianic monarch is to bring justice to the whole world but not by war. God will lead whatever battles are necessary to defeat the Assyrians, for example, but the ideal king from the Davidic dynasty will rule by the word – not by the sword or the horse or the staff, which all belong to the realm of the military. 12 Thus the saving king who rules by tzedakah umishpat will be called “The Prince of Peace” and will bring “peace without limit” (Isaiah 9:5-6) rather than conquest and spoils. The messianic king from the house of David will receive God’s wisdom so as to be able to judge in truth. Then “He shall judge the poor with tzedek (equity) and decide with justice for the lowly of the land and strike the earth with the staff of his mouth and destroy the wicked with the breath of his mouth....then the wolf will dwell with the lamb” (Isaiah 11:4-6).

The messianic king is victorious but he himself is “poor riding on an ass,” while banishing “chariots and horses” and breaking “the warrior’s bow” (Zechariah 9:9-10). Thus a monarchy of violence and the wealth of spoils and robbery are to be replaced by a poor monarch riding a donkey and judging the world by the words of just pronouncements that protect the poor and lowly. Thus in a messianic world the differences of honor between poor and rich are dissolved for the monarch who is at apex of social ladder has adopted the lowest standing. Care for the poor will then not be condescending but rather the monarch himself is "poor" in some social sense and hence equal with them.

Justice and Hospitality: From Prevention of Injustice to Provision of Needs Legal injustice appears in the verse “to judge the people according to mishpat tzedek” (Deuteronomy 16:18) – literally “just judgment,” that is, impartial decision making which is addressed only to judges (shoftim). However, the term mishpat utzedakah has not yet been used to refer to providing material aid to the needy.

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“God’s word – not God’s sword - will go forth from Jerusalem. He will judge among the many peoples ... and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation and they shall never again learn war.” (Micah 4: 2-3)

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Let us try to identify the stages by which this transformation occurs. Protection of the innocent of Sodom from judicial mistreatment gradually becomes offering provisions for the orphan, widow and stranger such as those offered by Lot as hospitality. Then this generous but voluntary aid becomes an imperative of social justice, of redistributive tzedakah. Here we will follow the perspective of the late Israeli Bible scholar, Moshe Weinfeld who has written the most extensive study of mishpat utzedakah. xxxii In the tale of Abraham’s and Lot’s hospitality he identifies the first Biblical embodiment of tzedakah umishpat as an act of granting positive material aid to the needy – Abraham’s hospitality to the three strangers whom he did not recognize yet as angels. xxxiii Abraham, in challenging God’s presumed judicial injustice to the innocent people of Sodom, exemplifies a second aspect of tzedakah umishpat. But tzedakah umishpat, Weinfeld argues, also refers to the political leader’s responsibility for the material well-being of society as whole. The political leader is concerned not only with judicial justice, as in the case of King Solomon judging between the prostitutes (I Kings 3), but also with removing oppression (negatively) and rendering socio-economic well-being (positively) for the whole of society including the needy. From the root mishpat come two meanings for the noun, shofet, judge. It refers to the “court judge” (Deut. 16:18) as well as a “political and military leader” whose task is to save the people from a national crisis like judges in the Book of Judges. xxxiv This category includes Samson, Ehud, and Gideon, who have no judicial function, but also Deborah and Samuel who are both judicial and military leaders. The phrase tzedakah umishpat involves proactive intervention to root out exploitation of the poor (Jeremiah 22:3), and to save and protect the poor (Psalms 72:4,13). In a further dimension tzedakah umishpat begins to shade over into hesed, loving kindness and rakhamim, mercy. The terms appear in a series of apparent synonyms in Zecharia 7:9. Hence tzedakah umishpat can involve positive acts of kindness between human beings including material aid to the needy.xxxv In the story of Sodom God sends his angels in disguise as helpless strangers to test the people of Sodom in providing material help for travelers.13 That is how Ezekiel comes to identify the quintessential sin of Sodom in its stinginess: “That she had the pride of prosperity (literally, was sated with bread) and she had tranquility for herself and her suburbs, but the hand of the poor and destitute she did not support” (Ezekiel 16:49).xxxvi By contrast, as Weinfeld argues, Abraham and Lot in effect provide tzedakah umishpat qua hospitality and protection from exploitation to the angels. In Isaiah the kind of hospitality to guests modeled by Abraham under the rubric of tzedakah umishpat has become a standard for treating all the poor, such that the whole people of Israel will be judged against that bar. Isaiah condemns Israel for ruining its “vineyard” by perverting mishpat utzedakah into its similar sounding corruption - mishpakh utzeaka which means “annexation” (from the root sepakh) such as the encroachment on the property of others and exploitation of the weak that make them cry out (tzeaka). Tzeaka is an outcry that echoes both in Egypt and Sodom.xxxvii The way to repair such injustice as Ezekielxxxviii 13

In early Greek culture Zeus is thought to send gods disguised as poor strangers to test the justice of mortals and those who fail to actively support their needs and even more so those who exploit them will be punished. For example, Hesiod writes: “The gods walk among mortals to recognize those who pervert justice and who oppress others .. Therefore immortals traverse the whole earth as Zeus’ guardians for mortals.” (Hesiod, Works and Days, lines 245-249).

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insists “if each person would be a doer of mishpat utzedakah.” That requires not only refraining from theft and economic deception, but also positively sharing one’s bread and garments with the needy.xxxix In the famous Yom Kippurxl morning haftorah, xli the liturgical reading from the Prophets, Isaiah describes the ideal "fast" day14 somewhat paradoxically as one on which food and clothing are given to the poor. Such sensitivity to the pain of others is the heart of prophetic, empathetic religion.15 Is such the fast that I desire,16 a day for men to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a reed, and lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, A day favored by Adonai? No, this is the fast I desire: To unlock the chains of evil, and untie the ropes of the yoke [of injustice] To let the oppressed go free. To break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, And to take the wretched poorxlii into your home; When you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin. Then shall your light burst through like dawn and your healing spring up quickly; Your justice [tzidkatkha] shall march before you, the presence of Adonai shall be your rear guard. Then when you call, Adonai will answer, when you cry, God will say: Here I am! (Isaiah 58: 5-9)17

Note the seamless connection between tzedakah as legal justice, as the antidote to an oppression, and tzedakah as sharing one’s food with the needy. It should be stressed that tzedakah includes not just voluntary acts of hospitality and mercy for unfortunates with a sad fate, but it includes a prophetic demand to reverse societal injustice that has created such economic inequality, exploitation and enslavement. Thus Isaiah has shown that religiosity – a fast day -

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In the Church calendar fixed fasts were accompanied by the donation to the poor of the costs of the food not consumed (H. Mayer, Charity, 240) 15

“To imitate God is to be alert to the poverty, suffering and loneliness of others. Judaism is not a religion, as Karl Marx said, ‘as an opium of the people,’ for opium desensitizes us to pain. The Bible sensitizes us to it.” (Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, 28) "Hassidim tell the story of the second Lubavitcher Rebbe (the `Mitteler' Rebbe) who was once so intent on his studies that he failed to hear the cries of his baby son. His father (R. Shneor Zalrnan of Ladi) heard, and went down and took the baby in his arms until he went to sleep again. When he went to his son, still intent on his books, and said, `My son, I do not know what you are studying, but it is not the study of Torah, if it makes you deaf to the cry of a child. (Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, 82) 16

Dror Yehoshua who organized the Hartman High School in Jerusalem to provide computer education for recovering ex-convicts talks about what he learned from these veteran criminals when he taught them about Yom Kippur and that sins against fellow humans is more serious in some ways than sins against God. Most of them spoke about their commitment to fast during the upcoming Yom Kippur, except for one ex-convict who declared defiantly: I am not fasting. His colleagues began yelling at him and he was on the defensive. He turned to Drori the teacher to mediate. Drori quoted a Talmudic source that God respects those who speak their truth with sincerity. Strengthened, the dissenter repeated: I am not fasting on Yom Kippur but I do pledge not to rob homes on Yom Kippur. Don’t you recall what you did in years past when you fasted but you also broke into homes of people who were in the synagogue (Yom Kippur has a higher rate of break-ins in Israel since the owners are away). Many ex-convicts responded to his criticism by blushing or turning away. He had taught them that what God wants in ethics before ritual. 17

“Project Isaiah 58" is dedicated to help Israeli families in economic distress with funds contributed by Christian evangelical groups.

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cannot be separated from ethics. Turning to God in self-denial is hypocritical if one does not supply the needs of the hungry:

“On fast days [Jews] distribute food to the poor. Any fast day on which the people ate and rested and did not distribute charity to the poor, behold they are akin to murderers. About them it is stated in the tradition "Righteousness would rest there, but now only murderers" (Maimonides, Gifts to the Poor, 9:4) When in his introduction to the Laws of Gifts to the Poor, Maimonides wants to make a connection between justice and generosity, he quotes Isaiah 58 which joins justice to the crying needs of poverty. Isaiah and Maimonides view poverty in the context of injustice, not merely of neediness. The identification of ethics as an inseparable aspect of religion is the subject of an anecdote retold by Abraham Lincoln about religious Christians who see no reproach in their exploitation slaves: “Approached by two southern women whose husbands were being held as prisoners of war, and told that the husbands should be released because they were religious men, Lincoln replied: You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their government, because, as they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat of other men's faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven!" (December 6, 1864) xliii

To summarize, we saw initially in the Book of Genesis that tzedakah umishpat did not seem to be related to “tzedakah” in the rabbinic sense of material aid to the needy, but rather to judicial justice – the challenge to God as “judge of the world” to judge justly. Poverty is not yet a concern in Genesis, though hospitality is highly praised when extended to travelers – though not to itinerant beggars. However Weinfeld argued that tzedakah umishpat refers to broader responsibilities of the judge as political leader and savior of the people from injustice and oppression whether internal in terms of exploitation of the poor or external in terms of foreign domination. Then he showed how in prophets like Isaiah and in the tale of Abraham’s hospitality, tzedakah umishpat included feeding the poor and offering them shelter.

The Democratization of the Vocation of Tzedakah Umishpat So far mishpat utzedakah has been understood primarily in terms of advocacy by moral watchdogs, like Abraham and Lot and the prophets, and further in terms of the judicial role of the ideal monarch who redresses social injustice, especially involving the poor and the strangers. However in Isaiah 58 along with many prophetic texts it is the people of Israel who are called upon to execute tzedakah umishpat. Maimonides then connects Isaiah’s tzedakah umishpat to Abraham the tzaddik, the righteous person who gives tzedakah. Only by imitating his behavior may human beings convincingly prove that they are true descendants, the spiritual and ethical children of Abraham. While in the Ancient Near East the cognates and synonyms of tzedakah umishpat are almost exclusively attributed as character traits of a god or a monarch, Moshe Weinfeld argues, that in the Bible this royal calling for executing justice, including social justice, 18

is democratized. Now each individual pursues justice and tzedakah. Abraham’s mission is to teach all his children “to follow the path of tzedakah umishpat” (Gen. 18:19). Jewish monarchs still have a special task in terms of justice because they are royal descendants of David filling his vocation (II Samuel 8: 15), but in Gen. 18 all children of Abraham are partners in this mission.xliv In summary, there is a progression toward greater democratization as the vocation of bringing justice to the world is assigned not only to the monarch but to very citizen From over 3000 years ago with Abraham’s vocation until the Holocaust and beyond, the people of Israel has been called upon to take up the mantle of its vocation. The Yiddish neo-hasidic Polish writer, Hillel Zeitlin18 sums up this vocation as follows: "It is to bring about deeds of tzedakah umishpat, goodness, right and justice in the world. It is to demand tzedakah umishpat in the world. It is to demand tzedakah umishpat not only for ourselves, but for all peoples. We are to teach pure God-consciousness to all nations (as a kingdom of priests – Ex. 19:6), to conduct a strictly holy way of living, and to provide an example to all (as a holy people). We are to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, care for the homeless (It is to share your bread with the hungry, And to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him – Isaiah 58:7). You should not be satisfied with philanthropic and humanitarian good intentions. You have to battle for tzedakah umishpat. You must stand always on the side of the oppressed against their overlords. You need to free the enslaved (To let the oppressed go free) and rescue those who are hurting. Have we fulfilled this mission in our world?" (Warsaw, 1939)xlv

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As a youth Hillel Zeitlin was a Habad hasid, but at age 16 he studied and began to teach both Jewish philosophers and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. He argued passionately for a secular, semi-autonomous Jewish territory in Eastern Europe to resolve the problem of Jewish persecution. But later he also returned to his traditional practice and published books on hasidic thought. At age 71, while wrapped in his tallit and carrying a well-read copy of the Zohar, he was murdered by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.

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Appendix: A Modern Sarah: The Mother of a Social Activist from Ceylon When Abraham takes on that Divine calling to teach tzedakah umishpat - both to his descendants and his household - he cannot immediately implement tikkun olam for the whole world. He is only one household, but he models and preaches a responsibility for the whole world. He becomes the first prophetic advocate making a case for the defenseless before rulers everywhere – even in Heaven. Robert Kennedy captures in words the step-by-step growth in Abrahams’s teaching of a global task by example. “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Robert Kennedy, speech to National Union of South African Students’ Day of Affirmation, Cape Town June 7, 1966

God’s criterion for choosing Abraham as the father of a new people destined for greatness was not only his own ability to live God’s way of tzedek umishpat but his ability to teach it to the next generation. The Rabbis also included Sarah as an educator teaching and converting people to God’s way. These ancient ancestors of the Jewish people served as adoptive parents to many who were not their biological offspring. The following story reveals the power of such a parent’s teaching and modeling: Rabbi Leah Kroll recalled that in 1969 in Los Angeles her mother hosted a foreign student from Ceylon, later called Sri Lanka. That girl became like a sister to Leah and a daughter to her mother. In those days Leah’s social activist mother was very disturbed at L.A.’s smog that caused serious respiratory diseases. Many days at school children were not allowed out to play because of smog alerts. So she organized a family protest at city hall, got gas masks for all her children including the girl from Ceylon and went down to city hall to protest. When the girl went back to Ceylon she maintained contact for several years but eventually lost touch. In the meantime as she grew to young adulthood her country faced terrible political repression by its government. The girl, now a woman, led a daring movement for women’s rights and democracy. She smuggled foreign camera crews into inland Sri Lanka to make her country’s plight known. She was hunted and almost killed. Eventually she won one of five UN human rights activist awards. When the tsunami brought death and destruction to Sri Lanka, the LA family was so worried about their adoptive daughter that they hired a private investigator to locate her. Not only did they find her, but she was invited to L.A. to receive another human rights award and there she was reunited with the American Jewish family. At the ceremony she credited the initial impetus to her human rights career to her American mother and the gas masks protest. In her mother’s footsteps, Leah herself dedicated her life to middle school education at Los Angeles’ Milken Middle School, where she showed students that they as individuals could make a big difference in the world. She combined Passover education with the study of modern slavery in Sudan and organized the students to wear bracelets with the name of a slave on each, to write letters to lobby their congressmen and to raise money to buy slaves their freedom at $36 a head. She also combined Holocaust education with a marking of the day in 1933 when the Nazis burned books they had condemned. On that day in Los Angeles Hispanic children, involved in a year-long joint tutoring project with the Jewish middle school students, came to the school to read, to learn about Hitler and to celebrate the power and freedom that reading can provide. 21

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see Psalm 72: 12-14, Isaiah 32: 1; Jeremiah 22:3-4, see Proverbs 31:9 Jeremiah 22:15-16; Deut. 10: 17-18 iii However, Abraham himself] is referred to as a prophet only once in this cycle of tales. Abraham functions as a prophet in terms of his intercessory ability. He prays to God to heal the king, but he does not function there as an advocate of justice, but of mercy. iv Isaiah 2:1-4; 5:15-16; 11:4 v Psalms 96:10; 93; 33:5-6; 89:3 and Psalms 67:5; 75:3; 96:11: 98:7-9; vi According to the Torah, neither Abraham nor Sarah was chosen to be a progenitor of his/her people because of their belief in monotheism or their philosophic search for the Divine, as is suggested by the very earliest midrashim. vii Nahmanides points to the sin of Abraham’s and Sarah’s treatment of Hagar, the ger, the Egyptian foreign worker or concubine/slave to explain the moral cause of their descendants’ exile to Egypt. That punishment is prophesied at the Covenant of Pieces (Gen. 15), but its moral justification is explained only by the persecution of the Egyptian slave, Hagar (Gen. 16). viii In Rabbinic Midrash the people of Sodom are identified as failing to give tzedakah. “If the people of the flood and of Sodom had performed tzedakah, they would not have been destroyed.” (Midrash Zuta Shir HaShirim1) ix The general term for conscience in the Torah is “fear of the Lord” - yirat elohim. It is used when a nation – Jewish or non-Jewish has no pity for the lives of those utterly dependent on them like babies, guests and the weary refugees. See Genesis 20:11 when Abraham suspects of Avimelekh of intending to kill him and take his wife; Exodus 1: 17 when the midwives refuse to commit infanticide for Pharaoh; Deuteronomy 25: 17-18 when Amalek cut down the weary, famished stragglers at the rear of the caravan. x The Biblical ideology of the king as true judge is paralleled closely in the Ugaritic Epic of Aqhat where Danel, whose name means “judge,’ is described as: ‘Upright, sitting before the gate, beneath a mighty tree on the threshing floor, he judges the cause of the widow, and adjudicates the case of the fatherless” (H.L. Ginsburg, ANET, 151) xi Moshe Weinfeld (4) xii The same terms appears in the Amidah prayer in the portion about restoring our judges – Barukh ..Melekh Ohaiv Tzedakah uMishpat. xiii Abraham and later the dynasty of David (Isaiah 32: 1; Jeremiah 22:3-4) are representatives of God the judge-and-ruler of the universe whose task is to bring tzedakah umishpat to the world xiv James Kugel, The God of Old, 109 –123 xv In Abraham’s appeal to God there is an ambiguity about its basis in God’s presumed justice or mercy. While on the face of it, tzedakah umishpat and the challenge of Abraham to God at Sodom are concerned with maintaining standards of justice, underneath there is an inner tension between God’s justice and God’s mercy. On the one hand, God’s response to the cry of injustice from the victims generates an impatient demand for immediate punishment of the cruel who exploit the poor. Yet Abraham insists that God’s justice will do injustice to the innocent in the city. On the other hand, Abraham asks God to forgive the whole city of Sodom - including the wicked - for the sake of at least ten righteous or more precisely, innocent, people who reside there. It is God’s mercy that may generate forgiveness and patience even for sinners. This forbearance is the most inner Divine identity as revealed to Moshe on Mount Sinai – “God of compassion and mercy, patient and slow to anger” - Eil Hanun vRachum, Erech Apaim (Exodus 34:6). So God’s dilemma is whether to listen mercifully to the tza’aka /z’aka (cry) of the exploited to punish the perpetrators or the plea for mercy for the wicked who should be saved for the sake of the innocent in the city from Abraham? Is the way of tzedakah umishpat truly a teaching of strict justice even for the stranger or an appeal for mercy even for the wicked? Mercy and righteous anger are dialectically intertwined. xvi In his final prophetic attacks against the last kings of Judah, descendants of David enthroned in Jerusalem, Jeremiah singles out as greatest malfeasance as their failure to support the poor, while enjoying their luxuries: “Woe to the builder of his house without justice (tzedek) and his upper rooms without law (mishpat); who makes a worker work for free or does not give him proper wages...... Are you king because you’re the best at cedar paneling? Didn’t your father eat and drink, and then ‘made merry’ (felt good) by doing justly and fairly (mishpat utzedakah)? He would take up the judicial cause of the poor and the downtrodden – that was what made him merry. Is that not how to know Me, says Adonai? ii

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But you, your eyes and heart, – all you care about is money! – and shedding innocent blood, and oppression, and violence“ (Jeremiah 22:13-17) xvii The terms holiness (Leviticus 19:2, 18 – You shall be holy for I am holy.) or love (Love your neighbor as yourself, I am God and love the stranger Leviticus 19:18 and 33) and tzelem, God’s image (Genesis 9: 5-6) are absent from the Abraham story, which is defined wholly by a language of justice, tzedakah umishpat. xviii Isaiah 10:2; Malachi 3:5; Zecharia 7:10; Ezekiel 18:12; 22:29; Jeremiah 5: 27-28; 7:6; Psalm 82: 3-4; 103:6 146:7-10; 12:6 ; 35:10 xix Y. Blidstein (4), 365ff xx on Genesis 15:13 xxi on Exodus 22:20-21, long xxii on Exodus 20:13 xxiii Ex. 22:21; Dt. 10:18;24:17; Isaiah 1:17, 23;10:2; Jeremiah 5:28; 7:6; Zecharia 7:10; Malachi 3:5; Psalm 82:3;10:14;10:18; Job 31:17,21; 6:27; 24:9; etc xxiv N. Wolterstorff, Justice, 76 xxv N. Wolterstorff, Justice, 70 xxvi “You shall not side with the mighty (rabim) to do wrong…nor shall you show deference to the poor (dal) in a dispute” (Exodus 23:2-3) “Mighty king who loves justice, it was You who established equity (meisharim)” (Ps. 99:4);xxvi “God judges the people with equity (b’meisharim),” (Ps. 96:10; Ps. 75:3) “Hear out your fellow men, and decide justly between any man and a fellow Israelite or a stranger. You shall not be partial in judgment: listen to low (qatan) and high (gadol) alike. Fear no man for judgment is God’s” (Deuteronomy 1:16-17) “Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob, You chiefs of the House of Israel, Who detest justice and make crooked all that is straight…Her rulers judge for gifts, Her priests give rulings for a fee, And her prophets divine for pay…therefore because of you Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps of ruins.” (Micah 3:9-12) “Execute true justice; deal kindly and mercifully with one another, do not defraud the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor” (Zechariah 7:9-10). (See also Amos 10:11; Micha 7:3; Isaiah 29:21; 59:4). xxvii Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament, 736-37 xxviii Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the OT, 421 xxix N. Wolterstorff, Justice, 123 xxx See also King Josiah (Jeremiah 22:15-16); the ideal princes of Israel (Ezekiel 45:9-12), and the messianic king (Isaiah 9:6, 11:1-11 and 16:5 and Jeremiah 23:5-6; 33:15). God’s own role in tzedakah umishpat is celebrated in a series of Psalms (96:10-13; 97:6,8; 98:8-9; and 99:4 as well as 9:8-9; 104:6-8), in Deuteronomy 33:4-5,21 and in eschatological texts (Isaiah 5:16-17 and 51:4-6). It is equally reflected in the whole royal ideology of the ancient Near East. xxxi Gerald Blidstein (4), Political Concepts, 112-113 xxxii Olam Hatanakh on Genesis 18. xxxiii Olam Hatanakh on Genesis 18. xxxiv In the Book of Judges some judges are only military saviors (Gideon, Samson)., while others judges combine both functions such as Deborah (Judges 4:5 and 9). Samuel also combines both (I Samuel 7:6-8,1516; 8:1-3). The dynastic kings, like Saul, do not take over the judicial of the Biblical monarch, but the kings of the dynasty of David are meant to fill both functions. (II Samuel 12: 1-6; 14: 4-8; 15:1-6; I Kings 3:9 9, 28) xxxv Tzedakah umishpat appear with hesed in Hosea 2:21 where God promise to prevent war and grant a fertile land to God’s people (Micha 6:8; Zecharia 7:9-10). xxxvi Ezekiel offers this surprising insertion into the Genesis narrative concerning the city of Sodom (Gen. 16:48-50; 19:1-29). He identifies their arch sin as the arrogance of hoarding wealth and constructing their prosperous life of ease built on injustice to the poor (Ezek. 16:49). By contrast, the just person restores to the debtor his pledge, refrains from robbing others, feeds the hungry, clothes the naked and lends without interest (Ezekiel 18: 5-18). xxxvii Isaiah 5 :1-7, see also Exodus 22:22; Psalm 9:13; Job 34:28 xxxviii Ezekiel says that the princes were "like woIves rending prey ... ; they shed blood and destroy lives to win ill-gotten gain" (Ezekiel 22:27). "The people of the land have practiced fraud and committed robbery; they have wronged the poor [`ani] and needy ['evyon], have defrauded the stranger without redress" (Ezekiel 22:29).

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Mishpat emet ,is true justice between one person and another (Ezekiel 18:5, 7-8,16-17 and see Jeremiah 7:5-6; Zecharia 7:9-10; Proverbs 21:3). xl The prophetic reading for all the holidays is specified in the baraita in TB Megillah 31a including the one for Yom Kippur morning from Isaiah 57-58 xli Holiness and justice are integrated in the Holiness Code (Leviticus 19) where ritual and ethical laws both define a sacred community whose God is holy. (E. Nardoni, Rise Up,. 86) Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem in the period between 742 and 700 B.C.E. He cherished a deep trust in God's holiness and sovereign power on behalf of God's elected people. His preferred name for God was "the holy One of Israel:" In employing it the prophet proclaimed the transcendent and overwhelming power of Yahweh, who dwelled in Zion as the center of his universal dominion over the earth (Isa 6:3). For the prophet, however, the power of God's holiness had a clear moral dimension (6:5-7), particularly manifested in his demands for social justice. In this, Isaiah resumed the prophetic tradition (Amos 5:21-24; Hos 6:6) and the teaching of the sages. Like them, Isaiah criticized worship that was dissociated from the practice of social justice (1:10-17). In this vein he addressed the political and religious leaders (calling them "rulers of Sodom") and the inhabitants of Jerusalem ("people of Gomorrah") and uttered an oracle of rejection against worship without ethical commitment (1:10-15). ‘Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice (mishpat], rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.’ (1:16-17). (E. Nardoni, Rise Up,.106). xlii The word 'oni, which in modern Hebrew denotes "poverty" as a social phenomenon, carries a different meaning in the Hebrew Bible. It means "suffering" or "misery,” specifically that produced by causes other than indigence, such as childlessness or oppression. A word formed from the same root, as a verb in the strong transitive construction ('innah), means "to torture" [or rape] or "to oppress", as with Pharaoh and the Israelites in Egypt (Exodus. 1:11-12). Leviticus Rabbah, distinguishes between seven terms:”'Ani – that is the plain meaning [of poverty]. Evyon – is one who yearns for everything. Misken – is one held by all in contempt. Rash – is one who has lost [all] property. Dal – is one who is removed from [all] property. Dakh – is one who is depressed when seeing an item [of food] which cannot be eaten, and seeing an item [of drink] which cannot be drink. Makh – is one beneath all others, like a doorstep [on which all trample].” (Leviticus Rabbah 34:6) According to this midrashic exposition, two of the terms express an objective situation – lack of property (the word denotes both movables and non-movables). Two others express subjective deprivation and yearning, one focusing on hunger and thirst, the other encompassing everything desirable. And two emphasize deprivation of social status, comprising both the emotional-relational aspect of constant contempt and the behavioral reality of being always "stepped upon." These three distinct aspects of poverty are spelled out here in a hortatory effort to evoke empathy and move the audience to action. …Thus a person might be poor, requiring help, on account of either (1) unsatisfied needs/ yearnings, (2) marginalization and humiliation, or (3) lack of property.” (Noam Zohar, in Poverty and Morality). xliii Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 437 xliv Moshe Weinfeld (4), 125- 128, Hebrew xlv Translated by Melila Hellner

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