NOTES for Deu 15:11

When reading the Torah attentively, it often turns out that some of its provisions flatly refute both widely spread concepts and no less widely spread hopes. The statement about the poor, who among the people of God, as among any other people too, "will always" be present, sounds discouraging in an age of "fighting poverty," a fight that is, alas, often more declared than real. Of course, in the Bible it is not hard to find an explanation for such a pessimistic view of the possibility of universal prosperity: the fall distorted the relationship of the human being not only with God, but also with the world He created, and now the human being has to eat from the ground that had previously fed him willingly, "by the sweat of his face," obtaining food with difficulty and often balancing on the edge of survival. Attempts at intensified exploitation of nature in order to get more turn into ecological problems for fallen humanity. In this respect the Torah gives no universal recommendations, economic, political, or otherwise. It only calls for mutual support, which allows the consequences of the fall for human society to be minimized. To a modern person such a prescription may appear somewhat archaic. But if one thinks about it, it is hardly possible to invent anything more modern and timely. The matter is that same love of neighbor that is just as relevant today as it was in the days of Moses and in the days of the Savior's earthly life. It is love, without which, alas, no schemes work and the grandest projects of universal prosperity, which looked so well thought out and flawless on paper, fail. It is that same love which, at the end of the path, opens to us the Kingdom, where there will certainly be no poor.