Q&A: Do Not Close Your Hand
Do Not Close Your Hand
Question
Hello Rabbi,
It is written in Maimonides:
Anyone who sees a poor person asking, and turns his eyes away from him and does not give him charity, violates a prohibition, as it says, “Do not harden your heart and do not close your hand against your poor brother.”
But nowadays I haven’t noticed that people are concerned about this matter (whether regarding a beggar on the street, in the synagogue, or a beggar going door to door). Also, the Sages, to the best of my knowledge, did not mention this prohibition explicitly. In your opinion, should one be concerned about this prohibition nowadays? If so, in what way?
Best regards,
Answer
The halakhic decisors and most of those who enumerate the commandments write that there is indeed a prohibition regarding charity (and some even count two). I think the reason people are not careful about this today is that fraudsters have become very common, and also because state institutions are responsible for the poor (and that further strengthens the presumption that the poor person is a fraud). In my estimation, this has no connection to the question of the source in the Sages.
Of course, this does not mean that everyone is a fraud, but it seems to me that if you give to an organization whose conduct you trust, and they check who is poor when they give aid, that is better.