Q&A: Unknowing Despair Regarding Gifts to the Poor
Unknowing Despair Regarding Gifts to the Poor
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In the laws of gifts to the poor, chapter 1, halakha 10, Maimonides writes (apparently based on Peah chapter 8, mishnah 1) that gifts to the poor that were not claimed are permitted to anyone. Is that because they are ownerless? If so, isn’t that ownerlessness without awareness? Or is this a specific scriptural decree establishing that gifts to the poor become ownerless when they are not claimed, so that they should not be left for the ravens and bats?
Answer
First, this can be anchored in the verse. Although, in the plain sense, it seems that the derivation from the verse is only needed to teach that there is no obligation to give them to the poor directly (that is, to go looking for poor people), since it says, “you shall leave them” (and not “you shall give them”). So it implies that once it is established that there is no obligation of active giving, they are automatically ownerless, and that is not itself a novel ruling from the verse.
I saw in Derekh Emunah that he wrote that the nearby poor know about them and presumably have despaired of getting them, and only with regard to poor people who are far away is this a case of unknowing despair. But that seems forced to me.
It seems more likely to me that although gifts to the poor are the property of the collective of the poor, there is no actual ownership here, only a right to take them. In that case, no formal ownerlessness is required. Either because the owner has already declared them ownerless and now there are no poor people claiming them, or because even if this is the property of the collective of the poor, there is no tangible ownership here anyway (if only because there are many owners here and no defined consciousness that needs to despair—they have no tribal head), and therefore even unknowing despair is enough to render it ownerless. And this is of course true even according to the halakhic ruling that unknowing despair is not considered despair; with property of the collective of the poor, it is considered despair.
Discussion on Answer
I think that in such a situation it is even more ownerless. Of course it is proper to inform them, but if they do not even have an initial thought of taking it, then it is truly ownerless.
The Talmud in Bava Metzia brings this case and says that it is not a case of unknowing despair…
“Come and hear: From when are all people permitted to take gleanings? From when the latecomers have gone through it. And we say: What are ‘the latecomers’? Rabbi Yohanan said: elderly people who go over the field carefully. Resh Lakish said: gleaners after gleaners. But why? Granted, the poor people here have despaired, but there are poor people elsewhere who have not despaired. They say: since there are poor people here, those others despair from the outset and say, ‘The poor people there will gather it.’”
That is exactly the source on which Rabbi Kanievsky relies. But as I wrote, it does not seem plausible to me, at least not for our times.
Thank you very much.
I understand. Makes sense. In your opinion, is that also plausible in a situation like today, when most poor people probably do not even know at all that there is such a thing as gifts to the poor? Here, seemingly, there is not even minimal “collective acquiescence.”