Alyssa M Gray. Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness. (Routledge, 2019. Pp. 214. ISBN 978-1-138-5996-3)
In 2000 Peter Brown delivered a talk in Jerusalem entitled Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, which stimulated a flurry of scholarship on charity in the late antique world. Since then a growing academic interest in Jewish charitable giving in the early rabbinic period has emerged.[1] Alyssa Gray’s latest work builds on many of these earlier studies (including her own) but largely charts new territory. As announced in her title, Charity in Rabbinic Judaism: Atonement, Rewards, and Righteousness, Gray concentrates on the conceptual underpinnings of charity as read primarily in the texts of the rabbinic period, largely focusing on the donor of charity. But her journey through these texts leads to an appreciation of the dynamic interplay of related religious ideas about charity, atonement, redemption, divine providence, and the underlying motives for charity-giving. Her fundamental conclusion is that there is no unified rabbinic doctrine on charity. Rather, like many other theological issues, there are a multiplicity of ideas on charity expressed in rabbinic texts. Her study highlights the influences, overlaps, and discontinuities, amongst these textual traditions. It also brings into sharp focus the complexities of the individual texts, employing a Foucauldian “problematization” approach to uncover questions and doubts raised in the texts themselves.
The book is well structured with the 7 chapters following a basic chronology and a conceptual framework that allows the reader to track the flow of the idea of charity — or tzedaqah (a term Gray prefers, for philological reasons) — in pre-rabbinic, rabbinic, and post-rabbinic corpora. This term serves to highlight the intertwined notions of the unentitled gift to a needy recipient and the merit that accrues to the donor through this gift. Following her introductory chapter, which lays out an overview and methodological issues, chapter 2 examines the concept of God as the true recipient of charity in pre-rabbinic and early rabbinic thought. Gray shows how the notion that charity is a form of sacrifice to God is present in the Bible and Second Temple literature, as well as in the Tannaitic period. She then looks at the push-back this theology received in the Amoraic period in both rabbinic centers (Land of Israel and Babylonia). Gray suggests reasons for this resistance including its potentially negative impact on the poor — as charity would become limited to the laws governing other gifts to God, on the community — as the poor would feel charity is their God-given entitlement, and — her most historically supportable claim — for rabbis who increasingly saw themselves as active intermediaries in charity-disbursement.
Chapter 3 introduces the concept of redemptive almsgiving, which suggests that charity brings some form of redemption, atonement, or salvation for its donor. Gray demonstrates the roots of redemptive almsgiving in the late Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament and early Church literature where it has the effect of “bind[ing] together the rich and the poor in mutually beneficial ties of reciprocity; the poor need the material support and the rich need the salvation.” (63) The chapter then focuses on redemptive almsgiving as it appears in both Tannaitic and Amoraic texts from the Land of Israel. While the specific type of redemption varies across the texts, the theology is well attested. Gray points out that the classic phrase by which the indigent frequently implore their would-be donors in these sources, zekhun imi, literally “gain merit through [giving to] me”, implies a redemptive process accrues to the donor.
Chapter 4 moves on to Bavli sources on redemptive almsgiving. Here, Gray notes that the Bavli adapts earlier ideas found in the Land of Israel corpora as well as innovates in three specific directions. Firstly, charity rewards its donors only if given to worthy recipients. Secondly, compulsory charity also provides redemptive powers to its donors. And relatedly, an unresolved tension exists in the sources between the redemptive power of charity done for the purpose of reward versus tzedaqah lishmah — charity given for its own sake. These innovations serve to mitigate the importance of the redemptive quality of charity, creating an emphasis on the human side of the transactional aspect of charity-giving. This is a trend Gray takes up in full force in chapter 6.
Chapter 5 is an excursus into the juxtaposition of tzedaqah and teshuvah — charity and repentance — a connection that is both logical and articulated in a number of Land of Israel and Babylonian texts. Gray shows that these sources demonstrate a clear preference for repentance over charity in bringing redemption, the former having the advantage of “interiority”, the latter being more susceptible to a mechanical or instrumental approach. Chapter 6 examines the Bavli’s somewhat unique limitations on the divine role in human affairs. Gray looks at this idea in texts that speak about charity, divine providence, revelation and study of the Torah, rabbinic law, and the recovery of forgotten law. These are all aspects of rabbinic theology that negotiate the interplay of divine and human authority, and the role that the rabbis. Gray utilizes and expands on other studies that have shown the Bavli’s tendency to minimize God’s role in human — particularly rabbinic — affairs. This chapter is important as it serves to situate the attitude towards redemptive almsgiving found in the Bavli in a larger context of ideological shifts that have been noted as occurring in the later generations of Babylonian rabbis.
The book closes with a final chapter that examines some medieval and modern phenomena that show both continuity and discontinuity with the rabbinic models of charity and redemptive almsgiving. In particular, Gray shows that despite the attenuation of the idea in the Bavli, later medieval sources significantly rehabilitate notions of charity’s redemptive powers. In contrast to these trends, Gray points to Maimonides as a careful and consistent reader of the Bavli who champions the notion of charity for the sake of the poor and societal good — rather than its redemptive powers for its donor — an idea that resonates with many contemporary formulations of charity and philanthropy.
The chapters of Charity in Rabbinic Judaism are well-formatted, each focusing on a central theme, each with its own endnotes, and bibliography divided into a primary and secondary (scholarly) works sections. This is a blessing for readers who enjoy following the trail of the author’s ideas in the notes and sources. Throughout the book, Gray has chosen a thoroughly researched array of primary sources, all rendered with care in their English translation. Gray pays attention to both textual variants and source-critical issues when relevant. She is particularly careful to attend to biblical prooftexts and both their original sense and interpreted meaning in the rabbinic literature in which they are deployed. Gray makes good use of relevant scholarship — both on the topic of rabbinic charity and other areas — pulling from related fields of study to illuminate her arguments. She frequently compares rabbinic charity texts with contemporaneous Christian texts on charity and related notions. Gray also begins many of the chapters with a contemporary or historical connection to its subject matter. This gives the work a somewhat didactic but also enjoyable segue between chapters.
Gray reads texts with a finely honed critical hermeneutic lens. An illustration: In her explicating of a convoluted exegetical passage in Bavli Baba Batra (10a-b) that addresses the theme of redemptive almsgiving — specifically asserting that charity confers a certain immunity from some types of death upon its donors — Gray points out that this passage works to resolve a tension in the Yerushalmi (between texts at Y. Peah 1:1, 15b and Y. Shabbat 6:10, 8d) about this subject. Furthermore, she argues, while the whole passage is attributed to a particular early tradent of Amoraim (Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Abba in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan) it is more likely the work of later anonymous editors who likely had access to a broader swath of material, including both material from Yerushalmi sources as well as narratives from the Bavli found in another location (Bavli Ketubbot 67b) which are referenced in this Baba Batra passage. She then contrasts the conclusion of this passage with another passage in Bavli Shabbat (156a-b) that seems to assert a somewhat orthogonal approach to redemptive almsgiving. Gray compellingly makes the case that the provenance of the Shabbat passage is, like the one in Baba Batra, of later anonymous editors. The conclusion is that what we might have thought is a unanimously held perspective on redemptive almsgiving is not only the subject of dispute between the Bavli and the Yerushalmi, but is further ramified between sugyot in the Bavli and, most surprisingly, the work of two different editors (or, I might suggest, one editor willing to hold contradictory positions on this subject). (107) This conclusion is significant as it further supports Gray’s fundamental thesis that rabbinic theology on charity-giving and its spiritual benefits is far from unified. It is also important as it sheds light on the nuances of the development and formation of the Talmudic sugya.
While Gray stays largely focused on the redemptive aspect of charity, the spiritual benefit accrued to the donor, her work invites further attention to the image of the poor, a topic of an earlier paper by Gray[2]. This attention is a desideratum particularly important for the Bavli material in which many of these texts display an ambivalent and complex view of charity recipients. In chapter 3 Gray does discuss some aspects of how the poor are depicted in early rabbinic texts as well as amoraic texts from the Land of Israel But additional studies focusing on Bavli texts would serve the field well.
In sum, Gray is a careful and intuitive reader and teacher of rabbinic text creating cogent and compelling arguments which support her conclusions about the interplay and shift in rabbinic values and theology on charity. Her overall conclusions about the lack of uniformity of rabbinic thought on charity across the geographic centers and chronological periods are essential to our understanding of the field of rabbinic charity and allow for more nuanced comparisons with other contemporaneous theologies. Gray has given her readers — both the specialized academic world as well as any interested scholar or clergy — an essential book on fundamental aspects of rabbinic charity-giving in late antiquity and beyond.
[1]These include Alyssa Gray’s “The Formerly Wealthy Poor: From Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” (2009); Susan Sorek’s Remembered for Good: A Jewish Benefaction System in Ancient Palestine, (2010); Michael Satlow’s “Fruits and Fruits of Fruits: Charity and Piety among Jews in Late Antique Palestine,” (2010); Alyssa Gray’s “Rabbinic Alsmgiving and the Rabbis of Late Antiquity,” (2011); Tzvi Novick’s “Charity and Reciprocity: Structures of Benevolence in Rabbinic Literature,” (2012); Gregg Gardner’s “Charity Wounds: Gifts to the Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism,” (2013); Yael Wilfend Ben Shalom’s Poverty, Charity and the Image of the Poor in Rabbinic Texts from the Land of Israel, (2014); Gregg Gardner’s The Origins of Organized Charity in Rabbinic Judaism (2015) and “Charity as a Negative Obligation in Early Rabbinic Literature” (2018); and Dov Kahane’s “Problematizing Charity: Rabbinic Charity Narrative Cycle in Bavli Ketubbot 67b–68a,” (2019).
[2] “The Formerly Wealthy Poor: From Empathy to Ambivalence in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” (2009).