Why are there poor people

The gemara tells a story on Bava Basra 10a:

שאל טורנוסרופוס הרשע את ר”ע: אם אלהיכם אוהב עניים הוא, מפני מה אינו מפרנסם?
א”ל: כדי שניצול אנו בהן מדינה של גיהנם.
א”ל: [אדרבה!] זו שמחייבתן לגיהנם. אמשול לך משל למה הדבר דומה. למלך בשר ודם שכעס על עבדו, וחבשו בבית האסורין, וצוה עליו שלא להאכילו, ושלא להשקותו. והלך אדם אחד, והאכילו והשקהו. כששמע המלך, לא כועס עליו? ואתם קרוין עבדים, שנאמר …
אמר לו ר”ע: אמשול לך משל למה הדבר דומה. למלך בשר ודם שכעס על בנו, וחבשו בבית האסורין, וצוה עליו שלא להאכילו ושלא להשקותו. והלך אדם אחד והאכילו והשקהו. כששמע המלך לא דורון משגר לו ואנן קרוין בנים, דכתיב …
Turnus Rufus the wicked asked Rabbi Aqiva: If your G-d is a lover of the poor, why doesn’t he support them financially?
[R’ Aqiva] said to him: To save us through them from the decree of gehennom.
[Turnus Rufus] said to him: On the contrary! This is what will obligate you in gehennom. I will give you a parable of what this thing is similar to. To a king of flesh and blood who gets angry at his servant, and throws him into jail, commanding about him that he not be fed nor given drink. Then one person cam and gave him food and drink. When the king heard of this wouldn’t he be angry over it? And you are called “servants”, as it says…
Rabbi Aqiva said to him: I will give you a parable of what this thing is similar to. To a king of flesh and blood who gets angry at his son, and throws him into jail, commanding about him that he not be fed nor given drink. Then one person cam and gave him food and drink. When the king heard of this wouldn’t he give the man a gift for it? And we are called “children”, as it is written…

This story is part of a pattern. In Medrash Tanchuma (Tzaria, Buber #7, Warsaw: second half of #5) Turnus Rufus acts another question of Rabbi Aqiva:

ביום השמיני ימול בשר ערלתו (ויקרא יב ג). אין כתיב כאן שיוציא הוצאות, ראה כמה ישראל מחבבין את המצות, כמה הן מוציאין הוצאות כדי לשמרן, אמר הקב”ה אתם משמחין את המצות, אף אני אוסיף לכם שמחה, שנאמר ויספו ענוים בה’ שמחה (ישעיה כט יט).
שאל טורנוסרופוס הרשע את ר’ עקיבא איזה מעשים נאים של הקב”ה או של בשר ודם.
א”ל: של בשר ודם נאים.
א”ל טורנוסרופוס הרשע: הרי השמים והארץ יכול אתה לעשות כהם?
א”ל ר’ עקיבא: לא תאמר לי בדבר שהוא למעלה מן הבריות, שאין שולטין בהן, אלא בדברים שהן מצויין בבני אדם.
א”ל: למה אתם מולים?
א”ל: אף אני הייתי יודע שאתה עתיד לומר לי כן, לכך הקדמתי ואמרתי לך “מעשה בשר ודם הם נאים משל הקב”ה.” הביאו לי שבולים וגלוסקאות.
[אמר לו: אלו מעשה הקב”ה ואלו מעשה בשר ודם. אין אלו נאים?
הביאו לי] אנוצי פשתן וכלים מבית שאן.
א”ל: אלו מעשה הקב”ה, ואלו מעשה בשר ודם. אין אלו נאים?
א”ל טורנוסרופוס: הואיל הוא חפץ במילה, למה אינו יוצא מהול ממעי אמו?
א”ל ר’ עקיבא: ולמה שוררו יוצא בו, לא תחתוך אמו שוררו. ולמה אינו יוצא מהול? לפי שלא נתן הקב”ה לישראל את המצות אלא כדי לצרף בהן. לכך אמר דוד  “אמרת ה’ צרופה וגו’ (תהלים יח לא).
Turnus Rufus the wicked asked Rabbi Aqiva: Which acts are more pleasant, those of the Holy One, or those of flesh and blood?
[R’ Aqiva] said to him: Those of flesh and blood are [more] pleasant.
Turnus Rufus the wicked said to him: Behold heaven and earth — can you make anything like them?
Rabbi Aqiva said to him: Do not talk to me about something which is beyond creatures [to do], which they do not have mastery of them, but of things that exist among people.
He said to him: Why do you circumcise?
He said to him: I even knew you were going to say to me something llike this, therefore I preempted and said to you “the acts of fless and blood are more pleasant than those of the Holy One.
[Then R’ Aqiva said to the staff:] Bring me sheaves and cakes.
He said to him: These [sheaves] are the Holy One’s work, and these [cakes] are made by people. Are they not more pleasant?
[Again R’ Aqiva asked of the staff:] Bring me flax stalks and [linen] garments from Beis She’an.
He said to him: These [stalks] are the Holy One’s work, and these [fine garments] are made by people. Are they not more pleasant?
Turnus Rufus said to him: Since [G-d] wants circumcision, why doesn’t [the baby] emerge circumcised from the mother’s womb?
Rabbi Aqiva said to him: And why his umbilical cord emerge with him, if his mother were not to cut his umbilical cord? Why doesn’t he emerge [already] circumcised? Because the Holy One only gave Israel the mitzvos in order to be refined by them. That is why David said, “the speech of G-d refines” (Tehillim 18:31)

In the Timeaas (36c-d) Plato concludes that since our means of measuring time was the cyclic movement of astronomical objects so must the time they define be cyclic. The month and its cycle of phases, the year and its cycle of seasons define a cycle of time. The seasonal cycle also shapes the farmer’s lifestyle into cycles. Time cannot be measured without a predictable repetition of events, be it the falling of grains of sand, the swing of a pendulum, the escapement of a clock, the vibration of a quartz crystal or the waves of light emitted by cesium atoms.

Aristotle thought that time was a quality of change. Not that things change in time, but that change and motion have a property, the time in which they occur.

Most ancient societies viewed time as cyclic. And this is Turnus Rufus’s worldview. A universe that would be roughly the same a millennium after his death as it was since time immemorial. And so if Hashem wanted the poor to have want they need, or babies to be circumcised, it would only be reasonable for Him to make them that way.

This mindset is alien to modern man. The contemporary western view of time is linear, a dimension — a progress from the primitive to the advanced. This notion that history progresses comes from Judaism, from our view of time as running from First Cause to Ultimate Purpose, a history spanning from Adam to the Messianic Era and beyond. Linear time gives us a view of man in which he can redeem himself; he is not doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. (See also the roles and language of cyclic and linear time “Miqeitz: Time and Process“.)

Because Turnus Rufus’s worldview didn’t include the notion of time as a progression, he conceived of the ideal universe as a perfect one. Rabbi Aqiva explained that the ideal universe is not one that is in any one moment perfect, but one that is constantly progressing to the ideal. And it’s such a universe Hashem created.

Similarly the Divine Ideal is infinite. A human, being finite, cannot ever be close to it. In fact, the most transcendent thing about people is our very ability to transcend. Hashem loves the poor, and He considers the circumcised male to be closer to perfection. For that matter, babies are more complete after the umbilical cord is cut by another person — and Turnus Rufus couldn’t argue about that. Hashem could have made a world in which people could have bread, fine clothes, even computers with their web browsers, without human effort. But better than a world without poverty or one where babies are born perfect is a world where people can make ourselves, can progress.

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  1. Shmuel says:

    But we cannot forget that Judaism establishes a cyclic quality of existence as well. We consider this journey towards Tikkun Olam as returning to the Source; kabbalistically, the histalshelus is represented simultaneously as a series of “kavim” in the Eitz Chaim as well as the concentric circles of Tzimtzum…

    • micha says:

      The post I quoted on Miqeitz was about the difference between zeman and eis, yom and shanah, and was exactly about this duality. Time is kind of a spiral staircase — there are yamim of progress, but shanim (which also means “repetitions”) where we revisit “zeman cheiruseinu”, “zeman matan Toraseinu”, etc…. Lakol zeman va’eis… everything has a point in the timeline and a proper position in the revolutions of the process.

      So that there are revisits, but each time one layer beyond the last time we were there, not an actual repetition.

      My point here was to share a thought I had during R’ Davis’s derashah last Shabbos, when he mentioned Turnus Rufus’s question about giving tzedaqah. So I was writing a part 2, tying the lack of linear side to Turnus Rufus’s question.

      The Yefetic conception was of an infinitely old universe. So they couldn’t emphasize progress, nor for that matter entropy, since any process would have run through to completion by now. So instead their world was pretty much constant — only cyclic.

      BTW, Turnus Rufus, like most of the Roman soldiers assigned to Judea, was from the Eastern half of the empire, the future Byzantium. Mel Gibson got it wrong when he had them all speaking Latin, they spoke Greek. I think that’s why he was R’ Aqiva’s foil rather than a more Roman Roman.

      In contrast, R’ Aqiva thought he was not only within a history that progresses, but near the end of that history. We’re talking about the future armor bearer for Bar Kochva, the man who saw redemption in a fox den on the Temple Mount. Which made him the right person to narrate this principle.

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