Tzedakah צדקה

One must begin with the word. Tzedakah is from the root tzedek, justice. Not alms, not a gift out of bounty: the giver gives what is due in any case, and therefore may not evade it, and has nothing to be proud of.

The commandment in the Torah is direct: "You shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your needy brother; but you shall surely open your hand to him" (Deuteronomy 15:7–8). The doubling of the verb the sages read as 'open again and again'—that is, the duty is not a single act.

The eight levels. Maimonides set the kinds of tzedakah in order (Laws of Gifts to the Poor 10:7–14), and the order is not by the size of the sum. At the bottom is one who gives unwillingly; above him one who gives little but gladly; above, one who gives when asked; above, one who gives before being asked. Then come the levels of concealment: giving without knowing to whom; being unknown to the receiver; and neither knowing the other—as through a trustworthy communal fund. And at the very top, one who upholds another by a gift, a loan or a partnership so that he will not have to take again.

That is, the reckoning is not by money but by how much of himself the receiver keeps. The highest level does not look like charity at all: it is work, a loan, a partnership.

How it worked. Not as a feeling but as a structure. A community had its fund—the kuppah for weekly maintenance and the tamchui for daily food—its collectors, its assessment by means. Whoever had lived in the town twelve months paid like everyone else. From the same root grew all the later brotherhoods: for burial, for brides' dowries, for the ransom of captives.