Mar Ukva, the reish galuta (“exilarch”), used to slip four coins under the door of a neighborhood pauper on his way to the study hall. One day, the pauper decided to find out who was doing this kind act.
That day Mar Ukva’s wife accompanied him to the study hall, and on the way they stopped by the pauper’s door. As soon as the pauper saw that people were approaching his door to slip the coins underneath, he ran out after them, and Mar Ukva and his wife ran away from him to keep their identity a secret.
They hid in a baker’s oven, which was still hot from the day’s baking. Standing in the huge oven, Mar Ukva felt his feet begin to burn, but his wife’s feet were unaffected. “Place your feet on mine,” said his wife.
Mar Ukva felt dejected; he saw that he was less worthy than his wife. Seeking to put him at ease, his wife said to him comfortingly, “I am generally present in the house, where I’m more accessible to the paupers. Also, the paupers’ benefit is immediate, because I give them prepared foods.”1
As a child, I grew up on such stories of generous Jewish homeowners. If a poor man knocked on your door, you gave him food. This was how it went in all the old Chassidic and Talmudic tales. But for some reason, those scenarios didn’t seem to happen in real life. When did a poor man in tattered clothing knock on my door begging for a slice of bread? Had I ever seen someone who was thin with hunger? Had I ever seen someone who was thin with hunger?Thankfully, no. Perhaps people were hungry in other parts of the world, but in my middle-class Jewish neighborhood, I reasoned that most poor people were richer than the “rich people” of old. Poverty was hidden behind charity organizations, mailers, fundraisers and, on rare occasions, an unknown man knocking on the door proffering a letter of recommendation for his cause. Even those poor men were not collecting for food. They were collecting for medical expenses or weddings, or for other needy families. If I offered them a chicken, they wouldn’t take it.
So I resigned myself to giving tzedakah (charity) in the conventional way. I banished the dreams of giving a poor man food, and instead emptied my wallet or swiped my credit card. Slick tzedakah.
Then came Rosh Hashanah. Along with thinking of ways to try and get a few minutes in shul (synagogue), I was also busy thinking about how I would fit all of the food in the refrigerator. I like to cook, and since Rosh Hashanah is the first in a series of holidays, I had a full freezer. Actually, I had three full freezers, fully stocked. Everything was packed to the gills.
On Rosh Hashanah morning, as I was racing around trying to collect all the things I would need before going to shul, the electricity suddenly went out. My refrigerator! What would happen to all the food? I hoped the electricity would go back on soon.
When I returned a short while later to watch the younger children so my older daughter could go to shul, I was overjoyed at the whirring sound of the refrigerator—our electricity was back.
I was putting up the food to warm when there was a knock on the door. A neighbor from my building asked if I could store some things in the refrigerator or freezer. “I’ll tell you the truth,” I said, “I have no room in my refrigerator, but my freezer always somehow manages to fit in one more thing. You can bring things here.” I pushed things around in the freezer and somehow made room for the four uncooked chickens that my neighbor brought. “They’re not even mine,” she said. “They belong to a friend who had no room for them, so I was storing them for her. The rest of my freezer is filled with bread.”
I knew that this neighbor was financially strapped, and there was a man who gave her leftover bread from bakeries in the city. I knew because she sometimes had so much bread that she would give me some. Now, looking back, I wonder how I didn’t get the hint—a freezer full of bread on the first day of Yom Tov? Why wasn’t it I knew this neighbor was financially strapped, but I didn’t connect the dotsfilled with Yom Tov delicacies? But I didn’t connect the dots.
“What’s wrong with your electricity?” I asked. “Ours is working.”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but ours didn’t go back on.”
The day wore on. The men came back from shul, and we ate a scrumptious meal. Then something clicked in my brain. The neighbors were sitting in the dark! And what about all their food? Theirs was a family of seven children; they must have much more than my small family. So where were they storing it all? I had told her I had no room, so they must have put it in another neighbor’s refrigerator. But who had so much room? Something didn’t add up.
I went up to another neighbor. “Yes,” said my neighbor, “they put their food in my refrigerator.”
“How did you have room for it all?” I asked her.
“Oh, there wasn’t much. Only three hard-boiled eggs, a small container of cooked spaghetti, and a little box with a fish head.”
“And that’s it?” I almost jumped. “No more? Where is the soup for tonight’s meal, and the fish and meat for tomorrow? What about chicken and kugels? They have seven children to feed . . . where is all the food?”
“She told me that she was bringing all her food over to me, so this must be it,” said the neighbor. Then the realization hit us. We had a family in our building that had next to nothing to eat! Presumably they had bread, but not much else. We devised a plan to bring the family some cooked food, complaining of having too much ourselves and no room for the leftovers.
Then I realized that poor people did not disappear behind fancy organizations and glossy brochures. They were regular families, behind regular doors—sometimes shabby, sometimes not—whose refrigerators did not need to be turned on for Yom Tov because they had nothing inside to keep cold.
Then I began Then I began seeing themseeing them. The unstable couple, whose shouts could be heard all the way down the street, and whose garbage came cascading out of the window regularly—and the tray of warm foil pans delivered to them by a faithful neighbor every Shabbat morning.
I noticed a woman who, thinking I had not seen her, sneaked up to a door and hung a bag full of plastic containers on the door handle.
I could still give food to the poor, a piece of chicken to a hungry soul. So can you. Just keep your eyes open.
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