[Avodah] Panhandlers In Pizxa Shops, And Elsewhere

[Jay F Shachter]

Someone posted the following inquiry to the Areivim mailing list (I
have posted my reply to the Avodah mailing list, where I think the
discussion more properly belongs, as it involves questions of
halakha):

> 
> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:10:40 EDT
> Subject: [Areivim] Begg[a]rs in Pizza Shops, etc.
> 
> They come over to you in between your mezonos and your first bite of pizza  
> (or hamotzee if you are so inclined) and they ask you for Tzedaka.  Are  
> these considered "real" aneeim?  Are you supposed to give to them or hold  
> onto your tzedaka and give it to a Rabbi who can guarantee it gets where it  
> needs to go?  
>  

The answer to your question is No.  You are to do neither.  You are to
give them, or at least offer them, some of your pizza.

Rambam rules, in a passage that is often poorly understood, in Sefer
Zra`im, Hilkhot Mattnoth `Aniyyim 7:7, that you must give the
panhandler something.  In 10:19 Rambam makes it clear that God will
deal with the panhandlers who are not genuinely needy.  God does not
need us to assist Him in this detection process.

However, we are not obliged to give the panhandler money.  This is
difficult for many of us to understand, because we live in a society
that has been largely built by Gentiles, and in consequence we have
lost the categories of thought suitable to understanding the Torah
properly.  The Torah does not describe a money economy (neither does
Rambam, for that matter).  The Torah does not tell us, for example, to
calculate the money value of our annual income, and to give a certain
proportion of it to Kohanim, a certain proportion to Leviim, et
cetera.  Rather, the Torah gives us separate and distinct commandments
for different forms of wealth.  We have to give, e.g., some of our
grain to Kohanim.  If the grain is worked into bread (and therefore
acquires increased value, due to the additional labor that has gone
into it) a separate commandment requires us to give some of the bread
to Kohanim.  There are separate and distinct commandments for fruit,
and for livestock, and for wool, and for other forms of wealth.

The same thinking applies to the commandment of tsedaqah.  Rambam
assumes this implicitly in 7:6 by distinguishing a stranger asking for
food from a stranger asking for clothing (the former beggar must be
accommodated immediately; the latter beggar may be required to wait
while we investigate the story).  We do not have to give the
panhandler money that can be converted into cheap wine.  The
panhandler who asks for money for food can be given food.  The
panhandler who asks for money for the bus can be put on the bus.  If
you don't want to wait for the bus, buy him a fare card, if your
public transportation system uses fare cards.  This is, in fact, what
I do.  Or, rather, it is what I offer to do.  Most of the time my
offer is declined.  That's fine with me.  I haven't violated the
halakha by refusing to help a beggar, and on the rare occasions when
my offer is accepted, I know that my money is actually going to help
someone.

If I encounter a panhandler on the street rather than in a pizza shop,
and if I am rushing somewhere and don't have time to stop, I will give
the panhandler money.  I know that the panhandler is almost certainly
a wino and a liar.  I know it better than most people, because I
usually offer to go into the nearest supermarket and buy the
panhandler some groceries, and I know how often my offer is refused.
But that knowledge doesn't bother me so much as it seems to bother
some people.  Actually, that the panhandler is a liar bothers me more
than that the panhandler is a wino.  An alchoholic who wants money for
a drink needs that drink.  He feels terrible if he can't have that
drink.  He will feel much better after he has the drink.  Certainly
there is a sense in which he would have a better quality of life, in
the long run, if he stayed away from alchohol long enough to lose his
dependency on it, but that isn't going to happen.

The other reasons why it doesn't bother me is that we don't give
tsedaqah for the sake of the recipients, we give tsedaqah for
ourselves.  God gave us mitzvoth for our own benefit.  God does not
need us to give tsedaqah in order to redistribute wealth according to
His plan.  The beggar will get what God wants him to have regardless
of what I do.  God commands us to give tsedaqah because we need to do
it for our own sake, because the giving of tsedaqah has an effect on
the giver which is beneficial to him.  I know that the panhandler is
going to spend my money on cheap wine.  I give him the money anyway
(when I don't have time to buy him a meal) because if I were to walk
by him without giving him anything, it would gradually change me into
someone I don't want to be.

The third reason why I give the beggar money is for the Qiddush
HaShem.  In a kosher pixza shop that is patronized only by Jews, this
third reason is equally applicable to both sexes.  On the street, this
third reason is more applicable to men than to women, who are not
visibly Jewish, except on hot summer days when it's kind of obvious.
But I wear a yarmulka when I go out into the street.  When I give the
panhandler money, after literally hundreds of other people have passed
him by and ignored him, the other people on the street can see that a
man wearing a yarmulka is giving a beggar charity.  This, I hope, will
lead them to conclude something about the Jewish people, and not, I
hope, that we are sanctimonious fools, but that we are charitable and
compassionate.  Who knows but that this example may some day come back
and help our people in ways that we cannot now envision.

I'll tell you whom I do refuse to give money to, and it isn't the
panhandler in the pizza shop, or on the street.  It's the man with ten
children who learns in Kollel full time, and who says exactly that
when he comes into synagog asking for money to support his family.
He, and not the goyishe addict, is the man who deserves nothing.


			Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
			6424 N Whipple St
			Chicago IL  60645-4111
				(1-773)7613784
				jay at m5.chicago.il.us
				http://m5.chicago.il.us

			"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur"