There Shall Be No Needy Among You
Re'eh and The Paradox of Destitution
There shall be no needy among you, since the LORD your God will bless you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion. (Deuteronomy 15:4)
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 kinsman in your land. (Deuteronomy 15:11)
For it is basically unrealistic to assume that society is totally righteous, deserving, something which is an impossibility in this life. (Rashbam on Deuteronomy 15:11)
What is poor by no means represents merely what is ‘less’ or ‘lesser’ with respect to what is ‘more’ or ‘greater’…poverty is the mood in which a being takes its deprivation. (Martin Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, pp. 195)
While the Torah is replete with commands to care for the vulnerable—strangers, widows, orphans, priests—it is only in Deuteronomy, in this week’s parasha, Re’eh (11:26-16:17), that we are first introduced to the category of the evyon, the poor or destitute person.
God promises the people that poverty or destitution will be eliminated if they observe the laws, particularly, the laws of sabbatical and jubilee (laws that include letting the land rest, remitting debts, freeing slaves). Yet God’s promise to end poverty or neediness is apparently belied just seven verses later. Which is it? “There shall be no needy among you” or “There will never cease to be needy ones”?
Commentators range in their attempts to resolve the seeming contradiction. Ibn Ezra says that the first verse imagines the utopia that we might realize if we observe the law, while the second verse predicts the reality we will realize as a result of not following it. Ramban is unhappy with this resolution, though. How can the Torah prophecy against the people? What’s the point of giving a law only to say in the same breath, “I know you’re not going to keep it?” If law is not, off the bat, achievable, why give it at all? Thus, he thinks the first verse references the special quality of the land of Israel, while the second verse references exile. In the promised land, we can eliminate poverty. But outside the land, we can’t.
We should note that the first verse is ambiguous. Does the line “there shall be no needy among you” come as a promise of supernatural reward for following the law, or is it just a common sense, naturalistic account of how to end poverty? “By doing these things, you yourselves will have brought an end to destitution in your midst.” If you follow the first reading, then destitution is a sign of unrighteousness, a kind of punishment or, symptom, at least, of disobedience. If you follow the naturalistic reading, destitution is the natural consequence of failing to uphold sabbatical and jubilee, but not necessarily a sign of rebellion. Perhaps these laws are just difficult to implement for reasons that are nobody’s fault.
Rashbam—Rashi’s grandson—takes a view that the end of poverty is “an impossibility.” Note that he focuses not on individual character, but societal virtue. Even if we as individuals might achieve high levels of moral maturity, this does not protect us from the inherent problems of living together. Morality concerns how we treat our neighbors. Politics concerns how we treat fellow citizens. Although he does not say it in these terms, perhaps Rashbam makes a nod to the fact that the political and the moral are two separate realms. Neediness won’t end because it is a byproduct not of morality, but of politics. 15:4 tells us that we are individually responsible to do our part. 15:11 tells us that doing so will not be enough to make the promised land a perfect place. All the waiting and the struggle, the anxiety and the conquest, lead, in the end, not to a final haven, but reality. Even the promised land is structurally flawed, and, on some level, that’s OK.
To venture an understanding of these verses, and to attempt to resolve them (or simply let their tension stand), requires that we define the evyon. Is it purely a social category, something like an “untouchable”? The Talmud (Bava Metzia 111b) says that an evyon is worse off than an ani, another word for a poor person, in that the evyon is resigned to his condition. It is normal to him. So who is worse off, the person who has less but accepts it, or the person who has marginally more but feels humiliated and resentful of his condition?
The Talmud suggests we prioritize the ani over the evyon precisely because the psychological pain of poverty (and/or low social status) is greater than the physical pain of not owning anything. By the Talmud’s definition, Alexander the Grate is an evyon, not an ani. It may also explain why he prefers the term “no fixed address” to “homeless.” Evyon is a catch-all for various kinds of lack. But as Heidegger notes, the most salient feature of poverty is that it is a mood.
If you go the psychological route, you might say that the Torah teaches us that social justice—even if it were possible to achieve—isn’t going to solve the human condition of neediness itself. Increasing absolute wealth and prosperity doesn’t remove, but often intensifies class conflict and inequality. And many studies show that, after a certain point, wealth has no impact on happiness. The U.S. is the most prosperous country in the world and also amongst the most rife with anxiety and depression. Sabbatical and jubilee might make society more egalitarian—no small feat!—but even if they achieve this, and even if they achieve this without making everyone poor, how can they take away the sense of need, the sense of lack and existential dissatisfaction, that lurk in the human heart?
A most shocking reading of the verses comes into view when we apply a Freudian lens. Freud coined the term “the narcissism of small differences” to reflect the fact that envy runs highest between people who are most alike. Thus, paradoxically, a society of equals and brothers might for that very reason also become a hothouse of terrible competition and one-up-man-ship. Cain kills Abel, not in spite of their closeness, but because of it. Joseph’s brothers hate Joseph when he is “one of them,” and accept him once he becomes a foreigner. (We could also make a similar argument using the mimetic theory of Rene Girard). We can’t let this point be a reason not to care for the evyon, though. Perhaps this is the paradox onto which the Torah wants us to hold—the impossibility of realizing a great (moral) vision can’t be an excuse for not pursuing it. At the same time, the denial of reality leads to all kinds of distortion. Policy is a crude instrument. But interpersonal concern is too small-scale. Tread delicately.
So evyon contains components of objective, physical lack, social status lack, and psychological lack. Maybe we can and should solve the problem of physical lack, but not the others. Or maybe we can only solve the problem of physical lack by introducing status inequality.
Does the Torah want us to glorify the great and look down upon those who are less so? Yes—the text valorizes those who pursue the law. You can’t value anything without creating a hierarchy between those who fulfill the value and those who don’t. But on a second order level, we should be humble, “for glory belongs to God.” The fact that some are heroes and some are not does not impinge, from the Torah’s point of view, on the basic, metaphysical worth of all people. But an egalitarianism of status is only possible in a world where all values are equal. And since the Torah is a moral code with a sense of good and bad, it inevitably creates a status hierarchy. The important point, here, is that it seeks to tether status to faithful observance of God’s law rather than, say, the attainment of wealth, fame, or achievement. These can be good and can be instruments for observing the law, but they are not the thing itself.
In its wisdom, the Torah admits that the Torah is not enough to cure us of our destitution. Neither law nor land can relieve us of the burden of being human. They represent a floor rather than a ceiling. But when we reach for the ceiling, sticking our heads up in heaven like the Tower of Babel, we inevitably become confused and scattered. The exercise of dwelling on the multiple meanings of evyon and the multiple possible readings of a text that tells us we should care even as we cannot succeed, is one of humility. It is with this humility that we are best able to help the needy in our midst, best able to acknowledge our own fundamental neediness. In so doing, we become gifts to one another (matanot l’evyonim).
Etz Hasadeh is a Center for Existential Torah Study.
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