Talk:Tzedakah

Maimonides List
Maimonides list of the levels of Tzedakah is floating on the first section without any context. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.172.172.120 (talk) 16:28, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

RE: Maimonides' Highest Level - (level #1) of Giving: "Giving an interest-free loan to a person in need" -- how is this possibly more noble than an act of genuine tzedakah?

Suddenly,author's interpretation changed from levels 2-5: performing acts of tzedakah
 * 1) Giving tzedakah anonymously to an unknown recipient via a person (or public fund) which is trustworthy, wise, and can perform acts of tzedakah with your money in a most impeccable fashion.
 * 2) Giving tzedakah anonymously to a known recipient.
 * 3) Giving tzedakah publicly to an unknown recipient.
 * 4) Giving tzedakah before being asked.

I don't see how such a noble act should suddenly become specifically "interest free" - seems rather shallow and perpetuating old harmful stereotypes.

Maslowed (talk) 20:13, 3 April 2011 (UTC)


 * maslowed - i think you are confusing the two terms 'tzedakah' and 'hesed' (or its full 'gemilut hasadim') - tzedakah always refers to money, the other to all types of noble acts. happy to discuss this further. Soosim (talk) 03:40, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Purim discussion
I moved the following text to here, since it was added more recently (and, in fact, directly references) the text immediately preceding it, with which it disagrees. Someone more well-versed in this topic than I might wish to sort it out. (I'm not sure what all those diacriticals are, either--probably someone's shot at using wiki markup.) Drasil 09:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Ğ  Ă ă Ĕ ĕ "On the holiday of Purim it is an obligation for every Jew to give two people food which is equivalent to a meal to increase happiness in the month of Adar which is the happiest time on the Jewish calendar."


 * Not so. It should be: On the holiday of Purim it is an obligation for every Jew to give Matanos LiEvyonim - gifts to the poor, meaning charity to at least 2 people.  On Purim, it is actually an obligation to give charity to whichever poor person asks.


 * Mishloach Manos is giving one person at least two ready to eat foods of different blessings on Purim and it doesn't have to be to poor people. It says to give it Ish Lirayeihoo - a man to his friend.  So we give it, men to men, ladies, to ladies.

Social justice needs mention of the Jewish tradition.
The article Social justice currently has nothing on social justice in the Jewish tradition. I do not consider myself competent to edit on this topic myself. Thank you. -- 201.19.77.39 09:45, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Scope of Pe'ah obligation
First, if we're going to discuss the contemporary scope of the Pe'ah obligation, this isn't the right article: we should create a new article for the purpose and rename the current Pe'ah article to Pe'ah (tractate). Tzedakah is considered to be a distinct obligation independent of Pe'ah in Judaism. Second, stringing together classical sources on ones own in order to form a personal opinion about contemporary applicability is original research; all Wikipedia can do is quote notable contemporary halachic opinions about contemporary application and summarize the reasons why. The subject of Pe'ah is a particularly tricky one with a diversity of contemporary opinions, so original research is particularly problematic here. --Shirahadasha 03:32, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

In the Bible
I have removed this section. The reason is that the Biblical passages it discussed describe the obligation of Pe'ah leaving gleanings of ones fields for the poor, but they do not use the word "Tzedakah", which is regarded as a separate obligation and topic. Accordingly, these passages can't be directly connected to tzedakah or presented as what "the Bible says" about it. It can certainly be argued that what came to be regarded as the obligation of Tzedakah arose by oral traditions connecting various Biblical passages and articulating a common theme among them, but this is a bit different from claiming that it's what the Bible says or that the concept is rooted in this set of biblical passages (as opposed to others.) This is particularly true because the Hebrew word used in the Bible (tzedek) connotes the concept of justice rather than charity, and the actual word is used (for example) in the context of requirements to establish courts of law and other obligations that we would tend to associate with "justice", so the map from the Bible to the current term is not obviously apparent and needs to be sourced. We need a reliable religious commentary here to connect the rabbinic and modern concepts of tzedakah with its Biblical roots and tell us which Biblical passages are regarded as relevant and what their relevance is. As stated above, editors' own efforts to identify what they believe are the pertinent Biblical passages are essentially original research. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:44, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

why the teshuva sidebar?
Although the sidebar on "teshuva" is nice, why does it belong here alongside the entry for tzedakah?

Bdenckla (talk) 17:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)


 * well...i tend to agree that it isn't the most appropriate, but the word 'tzedakah' is in the teshuva template, so, maybe the real question is why is it there? and if we agree that tzedakah is one way to help 'do tshuva', then i guess it can stay. Soosim (talk) 17:43, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

WP:EN
Does Google Scholar support the page title being in a foreign language? Is the foreign language term commonly used in italics in English-language mainstream WP:RS texts? In ictu oculi (talk) 23:18, 23 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The fact that tzedakah is found in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary suggests that the word is actually English (and does not require italics according to Manual of Style/Text formatting). -- -- -- 23:04, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * It most certainly isn't English, but like many other foreign concepts which are hard to translate in one word or two, large dictionaries can afford to offer the foreign-language term, borrowed or not-yet-borrowed. Better ones have cross-reference from entries on charity, ideally from "charity in Judaism". Terms which aren't in actual common use in a language are hardly part of that language, not in science and not in religion. Many self-ghettoising communities prefer to use a mixed vocabulary consisting in part of terms from their liturgical or ancestral language, but this doesn't make those terms "English". Scholars also use some of those therms among themselves, which again doesn't make them "English", which (w/o a qualification) stands for the spoken language in its widely comprehensible version, not for niche varieties. Arminden (talk) 12:08, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

"In other cultures" section: expand or remove altogether
Until now we only had Islam, which was bizarre (another word for wrong).

There is no need whatsoever to expand only to Islam. If anything, all this section can go and be replaced by a hatnote linking to the Charity (practice) article and the DAB page Charity - UNLESS someone makes the effort to show a direct connection between charity in Judaism and charity in Islam and other religions and cultures, which of course influenced each other. Judaism emerged in the context of the cultures and religions of the Ancient Near East, then came Christianity out of Judaism, Islam took from both and from ancient religious concepts of the region, and so forth. Later on they continued to substantially influence each other, mix in creating new sects and religions, and so forth. A presentation of tzedakah in this light would be the only real justification for keeping this whole section here. Right now it's only useless ballast. The topic is tzedakah, so either one creates a connection between various forms of Jewish and non-Jewish concepts and practices of charity and their historical evolution, or this has to go. I've added a rudiment of a mention about the general concept and Christian equivalent so as to create some balance and offer a chance for others to expand on existing parallels, but if that's not happening, it all needs to be removed. Arminden (talk) 11:55, 30 November 2021 (UTC)