Against Poverty- From the Torah to Secular Judaism 4]

remains is manageable.’ The majority of Jews belong to the middle class, a phenomenon that may not have existed since the days of Abraham , Isaac, and Jacob. A million Jews in the former Soviet Union , Israel , and elsewhere still live in poverty or close to it. They need our help and we fortunately have been more than able to provide it.

Our new level of prosperity has enabled us to expand the meaning of tzedakah to include more than the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. We can provide job-training, which is Maimonides ’ eighth step— in previous centuries an idealistic dream— psychological and social counseling, and health care. Nursery schools are available for poor working families. Special programs of all kinds have been created for the handicapped; they provide sheltered living quarters, workshops, as well as respite care. We have arranged for this within the Jewish communities in many places around the world or we have partnered with general social agencies to provide them.

For the first time Jews in large numbers have been active in communal social service agencies. They sit on the boards of virtually every communal charity and social agency and are involved in the daily volunteer efforts, though we should remember that an idealistic minority has engaged in such efforts and often provided leadership and ideology since the middle of the eighteenth century in western Europe and North America .

The Social Action Center of the Reform movement in the United States and in Israel has engaged many in broad national and international social efforts which extend beyond simple#zedakah, but it remains at the core. Tens of thousands have been involved in tzedakah projects of all kinds in North America and other Western lands and volunteered to assist other lands through the Jewish World