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, just as among any other people, "will always be there," in an age of "fighting poverty," a fight that, alas, is more often declared than real, sounds discouraging.

Of course, in the Bible it is not hard to find an explanation for such a pessimistic view of the possibility of universal well-being: the fall distorted humanity's relationships not only with God, but also with the world He created, and now a person has to eat from the ground that formerly fed him willingly, "by the sweat of his face," obtaining food with difficulty and often balancing on the edge of survival. And attempts at intensified exploitation of nature in order to obtain more turn into ecological problems for fallen humanity.

The Torah gives no universal recommendations in this respect, neither economic, nor political, nor any others. 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 recipe may appear somewhat archaic. But if one thinks about it, hardly anything more modern and timely can be invented.

For the matter concerns that same love of neighbor which today is just as relevant as it was in the days of Moses and in the days of the Savior's earthly life. Love without which, alas, no schemes work and the most grandiose projects of universal well-being, which seemed so thought-out and flawless on paper, collapse. That same love which at the end of the path opens to us the Kingdom, where there certainly will be no poor.