[Avodah] Can I not give to a tzedakah collector if he smokes?

[Jay F Shachter]

The following question and answer appeared on our sister mailing list,
Areivim (I have brought it over to Avodah, where I think the
discussion more properly belongs):

> 
>>
>> ... my thought was that if such a person blatantly wastes money on
>> cigarettes, for which there is no purpose, then why should I give
>> him tzedaka?
>>
> 
> If money wasting is your concern (rather than health issues), then
> lechoreh there is no question that you must give him tzedaka.
> 
> After all, the gemara says that for one whose previous standard of
> living included it - such an ani must be supplied with a 'sus lirkov
> alav ve'eved larutz lefanav'.
> 

The very rich are different from you and me.  They have more money to
give to tzedaqa.

If there is a community of people who are all members of, e.g., The
Stork Club, and one of them is fallen among thieves so that he can no
longer afford his Stork Club membership, then I think it is perfectly
reasonable for the other members of his community to chip in and pay
the Stork Club membership of their friend, so that he can continue to
show his face in his community.  And I think that those who do so can
properly and legitimately think of their act as tzedaqa, and so it
will be adjudged in the Heavenly Court.

In contrast, if I pay this gentleman's Stork Club membership, I do not
think that I will be credited with the mitzva of tzedaqa.

The above-cited poster correctly paraphrases the Gemara in pointing
out that the mitzva of tzedaqa depends on the economic class of the
recipient.  Our Sages correctly understood that Nature is very easily
satisfied, and that most of our day-to-day needs are determined by
what we are accustomed to.  A corrolary is that different people need
different things.  Avraham ibn Ezra, among others, has commented on
the strange wording of the last three words of Leviticus 19:18 -- "and
you shall love for your fellow as yourself" -- which sounds as strange
in Hebrew as it does in English (most of us would have written that
phrase with an "'et", not with a lamed).  The point is not that you
must treat your fellow as yourself, since your fellow is different
from you; rather, one must love that which is good for one's fellow as
much as one loves that which is good for oneself, though they be
different goods.  I prefer champagne to ditchwater, but I do not
assert that the cosmos does, and there are trillions of mosquitos on
the planet who feel differently than I do about it.  Or, to restrict
our examples to creatures from the same species -- although just
barely -- I do not need a closet full of shoes that I almost never
wear, and which were designed by sadists, in order to know that I am
loved by my spouse, but women do, because women are weird people, and
a man who wishes to buy his wife a gift for yomtov is better advised
to buy her a pair of shoes in which it is impossible to walk than to
buy her a subscription to Playboy and a bottle of scotch.

This is all true, and in accordance with the words of our Sages, but
it is not, in my opinion, the whole truth.  I am inclined to believe
that the economic class of the giver, not just the economic class of
the recipient, defines what is and what is not tzedaqa.  More broadly,
the condition of the giver, as well as the condition of the receiver,
jointly determine whether something is tzedaqa.  I do not think that a
poor man gets credit for tzedaqa when he pays for someone's Stork Club
membership with money that would otherwise have been given to a
homeless shelter, or even with money that he would otherwise have
spent on himself.  I do not think that I am in the class of people who
can fulfill the mitzva of tzedaqa by paying for someone's yacht.  And
I would not be so quick as the second above-cited poster is to dismiss
the first poster's question.  In the United States, paying for a
moderate smoking addiction is more than twice as costly as paying for
food.  It is not at all clear to me that a man who has never smoked is
obligated to sympathize with that, or to subsidize it if he cannot.


			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"