Q&A: The Pit Does Not Fill Up…
The Pit Does Not Fill Up…
Question
Peace be upon you,
In the passage in Berakhot about “the pit does not fill up…,” according to the medieval authorities, David suggested that the rich should take care of the poor, and they answered him that they could not.
Did David want to solve the problem of poverty in general, or was he coming to provide for the poor? Because if the intention was simply to provide for them, can the rich really not support the poor?
In Jerusalem, the three wealthy men could support the city for 21 years.
Second, from Rashi’s commentary it seems that poverty is a public problem, that the public is lacking something (that is the plain meaning of the Talmud’s wording), but from Tosafot it seems that this is a problem of the poor; there is poverty that needs to be addressed.
With blessings,
Answer
Hello Aleph.
This is Tosafot’s difficulty on the passage itself (as you yourself mention them).
In Rashi’s approach, perhaps one can say that the sages told David that this is not a method that can endure, because the money of the rich comes from the poor and from their peers (in an economy that is not based on import and export), and therefore the total amount of money in the system is fixed. So for a certain period of time this can hold up, but it is not a method that can endure and truly solve the problem of poverty. (And perhaps this is also Tosafot’s intention regarding the springing of the pit that does not fill it.)
By the way, I seem to recall that people have already asked about this Talmudic passage that its wording is puzzling, since it tells what would happen every night with David, and then it relates that during the day the sages of Israel came in and conducted this give-and-take with him. Did they really ask the same question every day and get the same answer? According to my way of understanding it, perhaps one can explain that the question was not really local to that particular day, but rather about the method over time. Every day he told them, “Go and support yourselves from one another,” and in the end they saw that this method could not endure over time because it does not solve the problem of the poor in any essential way (fishing rods, not fish).
In light of what I wrote, I would formulate the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot differently than you did: Rashi is looking for an essential long-term solution (rods), whereas Tosafot is looking for a local, immediate solution (fish).
By the way, a note for the sake of dialectical analysis: when they “stretch out their hands to a troop,” that too is not an essential solution. We have only moved from the money in Israel to the total money in the world. But for the same reason, plunder is also not a long-term solution, because the total wealth in the world is fixed as well. It will just take longer.
Discussion on Answer
What I argued is that “the pit does not fill from its rim” according to Rashi means that the total money in the system (poor + rich) is fixed. That is, if the rich give to the poor, at some point it will run out, and that is not a long-term solution. And the reason for that is that we are talking about giving fish, not rods. Giving rods to the poor would increase the amount of money in the system (because the poor too would bring in money or contribute to output, and then the total would grow).
Tosafot, who questions Rashi, says that this is in fact a solution and there is no similarity to the parable of the pit and its rim. In other words, Tosafot does not see the long-term problem. Right now they can give charity and support the poor (exactly as you asked). That is a fish-not-rods perspective.
Maybe it would be better to use the term “resources” rather than “money.” Money is a nominal term, whereas resources describe a real situation.
Thank you very much.
What the Rabbi says in Rashi I understand; this is also Rabbi Margaliot’s interpretation in Margaliyot HaYam on the parallel passage in Sanhedrin: “And this is a parable, for the rich have already dug and taken their money to supply the needs of the poor, and it is impossible to burden them further…” According to Rabbi Margaliot, the pit symbolizes the rich, and according to Tosafot it symbolizes the poor; I think that according to Rashi the pit symbolizes the public as a whole.
But I did not understand how the Rabbi derived from Tosafot that they are looking for fish and not a fishing rod. According to Rashi as well, this is not about an employment bureau but about the flow of money from the rich. By the way, Meromei Sadeh claims that this is not about poor and rich, but about jobs.