Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch on Behar: Should we have a welfare state?
Helping people is wonderful, indeed obligatory, but there are principles involved.
Mixing politics and Torah is a precarious affair, but what can you do when a Midrash quoted by Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch seems to make a strong argument against the American welfare state as it’s currently constituted?
The Torah declares, “And if your brother becomes impoverished and his hand wavers beside you, then you shall support him…so that he may live beside you (imach)” (Leviticus 25:35). Says the Midrash: “Yachol afilu atah mafsido l’tarbus ra’ah? Talmud lomar ‘imach.’” Rav Hirsch explains:
Don’t support him in such a way that you “reduce him to a condition of sloth and loss of self-respect.” For the Torah uses the word “imach,” which indicates: “you are to support [an impoverished person] to be an independent breadwinner imach, next to you.” You are to “assist him in such a manner that he does not sink below you morally.”
Helping people is wonderful, indeed obligatory. But if a person uses your help to pay for a drug habit he couldn’t otherwise afford or to stay at home watching Netflix all day rather than engage in productive work, then you are not helping him at all.
The Torah envisions a society where everyone helps his neighbor. Some people suggest that the Torah therefore sanctions a welfare state. Others disagree. But one thing is clear according to Rav Hirsch’s elucidation of this Midrash: If a society is to have a welfare state, it cannot be one that generally encourages dependency, subsidizes harmful behavior, and destroys a person’s moral character. Such a welfare state the Torah frowns upon.
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.
From Arutz Sheva, here.