Mishnah 8 seeks to define who is eligible to receive the donatives under the 'poor law' that have been the subject of our study throughout this tractate. (To the items listed in our mishnah we can add, of course, accepting money from the
kuppah or food from the
tamĥui.) In doing so, our mishnah defines a 'poverty line' in a sense. The Torah, in its legislation that provides aid and succour to the poor, does not define 'who is poor'. This lacuna is filled by our present mishnah (and this will be amplified slightly by the next).
2:
Quite simply: if you possess 200 dinars you are not poor. (The actual term used in the Hebrew text of our mishnah is zuz – so familiar from the ditty "Ĥad Gadya" which we sing at the Seder service – but zuz is just a synonym for 'dinar'.
3:
I recall how more than 30 years ago, as a tourist, I visited the Cave of Makhpelah in Hebron for the first time. The tour guide, after making us stop on the seventh step beyond which Jews were not permitted to pass during Moslem rule, explained how, according to the Torah [Genesis 23:15-16], the cave was bought by Abraham from a Canaanite prince for the sum of 400 shekels in cash. Before we moved on a voice came from the back of the party: "400 shekels – how much is that in dollars?" Now, according to the laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi [2nd millenium BCE] the legitimate annual wage of a free artisan was half of one shekel: that would make the more or less contemporary Abraham pay the equivalent of several million US dollars for the cave!
4:
But in the matter which we are now studying the equivalent in 'real money' is very pertinent. Of course, in order to give a just approximation we should not be concerned with the face value of the dinar in terms of the amount of silver it contained, but rather with its purchasing power. The Gemara [Bava Metzia 76a and elsewhere] suggests that the typical income from a day's work of an artisan – say, a carpenter – would be three or four dinars. If we relate to the sum of 4 dinars for a day's work this would yield around 24 dinars per week or around 100 dinars per month. If the annual income of such an artisan was around 1200 dinars it follows that 200 dinars is the equivalent of his income for two months. From here each can make his own calculations in modern terms.
5:
However, medieval commentators understand the amount of 200 dinars as referring to an annual income of that sum. It seems that it was held that 200 dinars should be enough to supply a person's basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) for one year. While it is not entirely clear whether an annual income of 200 dinars was considered to be sufficient for one person or a couple, we should bear in mind that the sages stipulated that the minimum amount of compensation that the husband may assure his wife when writing her Ketubbah [Marriage Deed] is 200 dinars: this would seem to indicate that this sum was sufficient to supply the basic needs of an individual, not a couple.
6:
Be all this as it may, our mishnah seems to define the sum of 200 dinars as the 'poverty line'. Anyone whose total assets are greater than this sum is not entitled to receive donations under the terms of the 'poor law'. However, if a person possesses 199 dinars he or she is entitled to accept these donatives. Furthermore, even if one thousand people all give this person what is due to him under the terms of the 'poor law' at the very same time, he (or she) is entitled to accept provided that immediately prior to accepting from them these donatives they only possessed 199 dinars or less.
7:
The Gemara [Peah 21a] tells us that Rabbi Yehudah the President of the Sanhedrin and compiler of the Mishnah (who died in the year 217 CE) had a student who was poor. Every third year Rabbi would give this student the totality of the Indigent's Tithe that was due from his (Rabbi's) property. Since Rabbi was the equivalent of a modern multimillionaire we can assume that the tithe that he had to set aside was very generous indeed. One year the student refused to accept the tithe because he was 'above the poverty line'. Rabbi investigated. It seems that some of his other students had been jealous of this poor student and had clubbed together to give him sufficient income to prevent him from accepting Rabbi's tithe. Rabbi exclaimed that his student had been subjected to "a plague of Pharisees". So it seems that the term "Pharisee" which appears in Christian scriptures as a pejorative term was also used by Jews to describe such negative behaviour – what Ramban (Nachmanides) was to describe as being 'wicked through following the Torah'!
8:
If a person possesses 200 dinars but cannot use them because they are mortgaged to some purpose (even to his wife's Ketubbah) he is entitled to help under the 'poor law' if his free income is less than 200 dinars. Similarly, he is not required to realise all his assets into ready cash: he may not be forced to sell his home and his chattels in order to qualify for his rights under the 'poor law'.
