ABSTRACT
In post-biblical Judaism, care of the poor remained a high priority, but the idea of poverty allied to holiness was less highly regarded by the rabbis, particularly in the Babylonian Talmud, than it is in the Bible. The Talmud belongs to a world of increasing urbanization, in which biblical agricultural laws ceased to apply and the Temple represented a lost ideal. The rabbis were practical men dealing with practical judicial issues, and their discussions include market forces, inflation and dangerous drops in prices, the occasional dishonesty of the poor, and the danger of their reliance on charity. Other signs in rabbinic literature indicate the high valuation of wealth and the wealthy in the talmudic age. Rabbi Akiva's contemporary, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, renowned for his humility, reportedly said that a man who regularly gives charity would have wealthy sons.
