Giving Hands Bring Justice

Tzedakah is about giving to those in need.  Its root meaning comes from the word justice.  Our giving is about restoring justice.  It is not about the giver’s feelings but the recipient’s needs.  Charity, on the other hand, rests more on the motivation of the giver.  Tzedekah is a commandment.  It begins with obligation.

We read “If, however, there is a needy person among you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kin.  Rather, you must open your hand and lend whatever is sufficient to meet the need.” (Deuteronomy 15).  We must give what the recipient needs not what we are motivated to give.

So important is the giving of tzedakah that even the recipient is required to give.  Why?  Because Judaism believes the act of giving shapes the heart.  One does not wait for the heart to motivate the hands.  One does not give when a charitable spirit wells up within.  Instead, one gives.  The heart follows the hands.  This is why even one who is dependent on tzedakah must give tzedakah.   Their heart is shaped by reaching toward others.

The Torah continues, “For there will never cease to be needy ones in your land, which is why I command you: open your hand to the poor and needy kin in your land.”  I wonder.  If God is all powerful why not eliminate such need?  Why will there never cease to be needy ones?  God could eradicate hunger.  God could do away with injustice. 

God leaves the world unfinished. God leaves it to us to repair.  God knows that our hearts can only be shaped by our hands. 

God leaves it to us to shape a more just world.  The power to do so rests in our hands.

It begins with one person in need.  It starts with the gift of tzedakah.