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By Rabbi Michael Paley
One time I was walking in Jerusalem, rushing to a meeting, tense about my day and even my life, when I stopped to eat an apple. All of the sudden, a man came over and asked me for the apple.
I responded sharply, “No!” He looked at me and said: “Do you think I need your apple? I see that you need to give it to me! You need to do an act of tzedakah — immediately!”
I was dumbfounded, but I gave him the apple and, in some way, it widened my vision. It made everything seem just a bit better. It was the best apple I never ate.
Tzedakah, unlike charity, is seen as an obligation. At first glance, it comes from the word tzedek, justice. But on closer analysis, it derives from a deeper sense of “justified,” like the margin on a page, or even better: harmonious and well-tempered, like a beautiful piece of music.
Suppose we saw the world around us as a symphony. Wherever we looked, we would see people as they were created: in the image of God. You can ignore many people in life, but if you notice that they were made in the image of God, as we are told in the book of Genesis, you will immediately reach out and bring them into the great chorus.
In Leviticus 19, we are told to let the corners of our fields remain for the poor, and any grain that we cannot hold to leave fallen so they can pick it up. Would it not be more efficient just to send some money to poor people and get it over with?
But the Torah is telling us something startling: we shouldn’t distance ourselves from those less fortunate than us. They should work alongside us, because we are all in this together. We read in Deuteronomy 15:7, “If there is a poor man among your brothers …. do not be hard-hearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother.” It goes on to say that while there will always be poor, the quality of our society depends on the state of how we see one another.
The best way to bring our community a rich sense of understanding and harmony is to take the apples that we have been given and share them. That will help us get to a better future. ♦
Rabbi Michael Paley is scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation of New York.
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