ABSTRACT

This chapter explores thirteen functional areas in which support for the poor was provided in ancient Judea and also explores direct poor relief strategies. For each of these thirteen areas, it attempts to chart the change process that occurred over time. The chapter starts with a description of the original practice, as presented in the Pentateuch. It discovers whether and how these practices were subsequently adapted or changed. There may be a gap of more than a thousand years between the earliest report and the institutional provisions described in the Talmud. Since coinage became common in Judea during the latter part of the Second Temple period, many centuries before the destruction of the Temple in 69/70 CE, some communal philanthropic institutions must have been in existence long before the Roman occupation of Judea in the first century BCE. Two “secret chambers” for giving and receiving charity were said to exist in the Second Temple.