Recent scholarship has shown how investigations into food and poverty contribute to our understanding of late-antique Judaism and Christianity. These areas of inquiry overlap in the study of charity, as providing food was the preeminent way to support the poor. What foods and foodways do the earliest texts of rabbinic Judaism prescribe for the poor? This article examines Tannaitic discussions of the foods that should be given as charity, reading these texts within their literary and historical contexts. I find that they prescribe a two-tiered system whereby foods for the week aim to meet the poor’s biological needs, while those for the Sabbath fulfill religious requirements. These rabbinic instructions, however, also reinforce social separation and deepen the poor’s sense of exclusion. This article contributes to scholarship on poverty and charity in late antiquity, the use of food in the construction of rabbinic identity, and the tensions that arise from establishing material requirements for religious observances.
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Roger Brooks, Support for the Poor in the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: Tractate Peah (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1983), 147-48 interprets “know” to indicate that the supervisors do not “know” if the poor man is a local. Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah: A Comprehensive Commentary on the Tosefta (2 vols.; New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1955), 1:183-84 [Hebrew] and Eduard Lohse and Günter Mayer, eds., Die Tosefta, Seder I: Zeraim, 1.1: Berakot - Pea (vol. 1 of Rabbinische Texte; ed. G. Kittel et al.; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1999), 149 n. 68 interpret that they do not “know” if he is genuinely poor. The latter interpretation aligns with other Tannaitic texts that express suspicion of those who claim to be poor (e.g., t. Peʾah 4:13-14 and m. Peʾah 8:9), a distrust that was common among writers of the age (e.g., Horace, Ep. 1.17.58-59; Martial 12.57.12; Did. 1.5-6; Ambrose, Off. 2.77). To be sure, the interpretations by Brooks and Lieberman/Lohse are not mutually exclusive—if one is not known because he is not local, then it is unlikely that his claims to poverty can be verified. Thus, eligibility for the quppa depends upon one’s residential status and financial need. Whether or not the charity supervisors “know” the poor may also be understood as whether or not the poor man is a personal acquaintance of the supervisor, which could result in special privileges and create a relationship of personal dependency between the supervisor and the poor man. To be sure, the Tannaim envisioned organized charity as a means to promote fairness among the poor and prevent such hierarchical relationships by positioning charity supervisors as intermediaries between benefactors and beneficiaries. It is surely possible, however, that a poor man may become dependent upon a particular supervisor or that a supervisor may show favoritism towards certain individuals. The Tannaim anticipate these possibilities and instruct that the charity supervisors carry out their duties as if they were judges who adjudicate blindly, without favoritism (see the parallels between m. Peʾah 8:7 and m. Šeqal. 5:2, m. Sanh. 1:1). The Tosefta also instructs that charity supervisors avoid creating the misperception that the provisions are from their own pockets (t. Peʾah 4:15; t. B. Meṣiʿa 3:9).
Roland Barthes, “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food Consumption,” in Food and Drink in History: Selections from the Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisations, Volume 5 (ed. O. A. Ranum and R. Forster; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 166-73, here 167-68.
Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” Daedalus 101 (1972): 61-81, here 61.
Webb Keane, “Semiotics and the Social Analysis of Material Things,” Language & Communication 23 (2003): 409-25, here 410. I thank Ra‘anan S. Boustan for discussing Keane’s work with me.
See Horace, Sat. 2.3.182; Pliny the Elder, Nat. 18.50, 101, 119; 22.154; cf. Andreas Gutsfeld, “Vegetables,” Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World: Antiquity (ed. Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider; 15 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2002-2010), s.v.
Translation based on Jacob Z. Lauterbach, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael: A Critical Edition, Based on the Manuscripts and Early Editions (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2004), 244 and the nrsv (with my emendations). I follow the Hebrew text of H. S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mechilta d’Rabbi Ismael (2nd ed.; Jerusalem: Shalem Books, 1997), 168 [Hebrew].
Eliezer Segal, Sanctified Seasons (Calgary: CreateSpace for the Alberta Judaic Library, 2008), 3. That principle often precedes exegesis in rabbinic texts is noted by Shaye J. D. Cohen, “Judaean Legal Tradition and the Halakha of the Mishnah,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature (ed. Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert and Martin S. Jaffee; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 121-43, esp. 139.
That is, the Sabbath; see Schäfer, Judeophobia, 90-91; Menahem Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism (3 vols.; Jerusalem: Publications of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1974-1984), 1:436.
Schäfer, Judeophobia, 90-91; Stern, Greek and Latin Authors, 1:436.
See Broshi, Bread, 134-35; Garnsey, Food and Society, 116-17; and Krauss, Talmudische archäologie, 1:110-12; cf. Lev-Tov, “ ‘Upon What Meat,’ ” 420-46.
David M. Freidenreich, Foreigners and their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 48.
David Morgan, ed., Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), xiii-xiv.
See Isaiah 58:13; Lutz Doering, “Sabbath and Festivals,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Daily Life in Roman Palestine, 566-86, esp. 572-73; and Tabory, “Jewish Festivals,” 561-62.
Broshi, Bread, 134; S. Safrai, “Home and Family,” in The Jewish People in the First Century: Historical Geography, Political History, Social, Cultural and Religious Life and Institutions (ed. S. Safrai and M. Stern; 2 vols.; crint 1; Assen: Van Gorcum, 1974), 2:728-92, esp. 747.
Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 147-50, 157-58.
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Recent scholarship has shown how investigations into food and poverty contribute to our understanding of late-antique Judaism and Christianity. These areas of inquiry overlap in the study of charity, as providing food was the preeminent way to support the poor. What foods and foodways do the earliest texts of rabbinic Judaism prescribe for the poor? This article examines Tannaitic discussions of the foods that should be given as charity, reading these texts within their literary and historical contexts. I find that they prescribe a two-tiered system whereby foods for the week aim to meet the poor’s biological needs, while those for the Sabbath fulfill religious requirements. These rabbinic instructions, however, also reinforce social separation and deepen the poor’s sense of exclusion. This article contributes to scholarship on poverty and charity in late antiquity, the use of food in the construction of rabbinic identity, and the tensions that arise from establishing material requirements for religious observances.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 407 | 82 | 8 |
Full Text Views | 211 | 4 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 73 | 5 | 0 |