56 Daniel Schiff

beneficiary during the retirement years. Yet this depiction is plainly at odds with the reality of how Social Security works. Clearly, whether or not one“gets one’s money back” depends in large measure upon how long one lives after beginning to receive Social Security checks. Even if two hypothetical individuals were to draw retirement benefits for an exactly equivalent period of time, however— five years, by way of example— the result would not be the gradual and even return of those monies that each individual had paid in. In actuality, since payable benefits are capped for higher income earners, Social Security is distributive in nature— it provides those who had greater incomes with a smaller percentage of their pre-retirement income than it does for those of lesser means.

And herein lies the first potential halakhic quibble with the Social Security retirement benefit as it is currently constituted,— for Jewish law does not support the forcible redistribution of wealth from those of greater means to those of lesser means. The Jewish system most certainly envisages a sizeable tzedakah“tax” on the entire community to provide for those in need, and it unequivocally calls upon the rich to do more through private, rather than public, channels. It does not, however, advocate that poverty should be dealt with by taxing higher income workers at higher rates in order to diminish the wealth gap. The imperatives of Jewish law“make it clear that what Judaism calls for is responsibility to the poor, not income redistribution. It makes no judgment as to what constitutes equity in income distribution.”®® There is, consequently, no promotion“in halakhic fiscal decisions of a policy aimed at the redistribution of wealth,” since“[n]one of the halakhic authorities seem to consider tzedakah as an egalitarian device intended to transfer funds from the rich to the poor. Rather, they adopt the Maimonidean position that‘it is not the obligation of the householder to enrich the poor, only to support them.””?’