Richard S. Rheins

In the American heartland, there is a popular folk expression: “Poor is as poor does.” In truth, advocates for the working poor must confront the facts that bad decisions and destructive life-styles are self-inflicted wounds that keep many of the working poor from achieving a breakthrough that would improve the quality of their lives. David Shipler , the Pulitzer Prize winning author and journalist whose important book on the working poor is both a terrific review of the impact of social policies as well as a collection of heartrending case studies, notes:

It is difficult to find someone whose poverty is not

somehow related to his or her unwise behavior— to

drop out of school, to have a baby out of wedlock, to

do drugs, to be chronically late to work.

At the same time, Shipler ’s research and extensive interviews with the case families lead him to conclude: And it is difficult to find behavior that is not somehow related to the inherited conditions of being poorly educated, poorly housed in neighborhoods from which no distant horizon of possibility can be seen.’

Who is responsible? Surely, the poor are responsible for much of their woe. So too, those of us who are blessed to live in relative comfort and security are also culpable for ignoring the plight of working poor if not for acts of outright callousness toward those who do our“dirty work.” But spreading the blame does not help improve the lives of those who work but are still suffering under the yoke of poverty. The Torah teaches that the crisis of poverty may never be solved but we are, nevertheless, compelled to act on its behalf:

Ki lo yech-dal evyon me-kerev ha-aretz, For the poor

will never cease out of the land, therefore, I command

you, saying:‘You shall surely open your hand unto

your poor and needy brother in your land.’ is: