Economic Inequality and Charity

The daughters of Zelophehad had previously been disenfranchised by the system but were able to advocate for themselves and not only did God heed their request, God changed the law entirely. We must act as the daughters of Zelophehad and reconcile the injustices we find.

...if we want the soil of our land to live up to our hopes for it, we must hold to our faith — whether that is in God, in the land itself, or, in our case, the conviction of the cause(s) we are working for — and believe that we will reap the fruits of our labor.

We are commanded to be holy in this parshah and “to not profit by the blood of our fellow.” (Leviticus 19:16) This means that we are obligated to do our best in preventing worker abuse.

...if, like this Pharaoh, we can move beyond the terror to seeking options with an open mind, we may find ourselves with more resources at hand than we ever realized was possible.

Down the line, we may trace the origin of the hunger for power contested between the tribes of Israel.

These passages (from this week's parshah) go beyond the basic responsibility of physically helping the poor; they challenge us to take into account their dignity and personhood.

...the Torah instructs that in the midst of our holiest cities and amongst people who do the work of God, that precisely there — in that place — are the vulnerable to take refuge.

Our Torah depicts what can happen to us in a world without water... Moses striking the rock to yield water is a vivid metaphor for the water-related violence that is breaking out all over our world — particularly in the Middle East, as well as in South Asia and Africa.

When a particular word occurs only seven times in the entire Bible, and all seven occurrences are in one chapter, we pay attention.

That’s Kedoshim’s point – that those of us who own land (and its modern equivalent, a bank account) have an undeniable responsibility to support those who don’t.