ABSTRACT
Who may receive charity from the community? This text discusses the criteria for distributing alms from two charitable institutions that are financed by the community as a whole (though the poor are exempt from contributing) and would become hallmarks of Jewish philanthropy. The soup kitchen (tamchui) grants basic sustenance (bread, shelter) to anyone in need. More complex is the charity fund (quppa), which aims to restore impoverished locals to their previous standards of living. Overseen by a specially appointed supervisor, the charity fund ought to provide a poor individual with the precise kinds of food and clothing to which he was once accustomed. If the poor man used to eat bread that was prepared in a certain way, or to wear a garment made of a certain fabric, then the charity fund should provide him with exact replacements. One who used to be wealthy should even be given a servant, a horse, and the means to support a wife—surely a hyperbolic statement meant to emphasize that the community should go to great lengths to restore impoverished individuals to their previous standing. A similar message is conveyed by the last line, where the men of Galilee collectively provide a pound of meat on a daily basis to an elder. Meat was perhaps the most expensive food in Roman Palestine and consuming it on a regular basis was a sign of wealth and social status. Whereas the Mishnah ( A16 ) establishes absolute and universal criteria for collecting harvest gifts, this text defines poverty in individual and relative terms, because one may receive charity if he has fallen in wealth—which was considered to be particularly embarrassing and shameful.
