Emor
When you reap the harvest of
your land, you shall not altogether remove the corners of your field, or gather
the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the
stranger; I the Lord am your God.
There was a pagan custom to leave
some sheaves as a gift to the demons to protect the harvest. Accordingly, this precept was also aimed at
uprooting this heathen notion, and that custom was now given the new content of
charity and generosity towards one’s fellow being.
Yitzchak Heinemann (19th
Century)
These verses occur (in the middle
of the commandments concerning the harvest) because God surrounded
Keli Yakar
(16th Century)
The Midrash
teaches a very important lesson: The
Torah puts the obligation of gifts to the poor among sacrifices precepts in
order to underline that these offerings do not present gifts to God…Rather, the
Temple service aims at the purity of the heart, attained by way of the
offerings…Thus, one who leaves these “offerings” to the poor is considered as
someone who has built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and offered up sacrifices in
it.
Rashi (11th Century)
We learn that one
who gives graciously to the poor, makes a loan to the Lord. We should realize that not only the
*unexplained) religious statutes were given at Sinai on Shavuot but also the
rational laws, such as kindness towards the poor and the stranger. Indeed without belief in God the human mind
is liable to become savage and pitiless even to one’s own father…Hence, we are
to celebrate on Shavuot the giving of the Torah…the entire Torah.
Meshekh Hokhmah
(19th Century)
It is evident that these laws are
not made for the direct purpose of the maintenance of the poor. Even the poor man himself has to leave his
gleanings from the field and to other poor people. It is clear that at the harvest, at the
moment when a person takes home that which nature and his own hard work have
yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching words “my own” in his
mouth, these laws are to remind every member of the nation, and to demand an
act of recognition from him, of the fact that this “my own” includes for
everybody the duty of caring for others who are needy…
Samson Raphael Hirsch (19th
Century)
The visible expression of God’s
extreme goodwill is expressed by His assigning these holydays so that (those)
who are unable to study Torah can comprehend the meaning of Torah by means of
the ceremonies based on historical events performed on the Shabbat and the
other holydays…In this way they can also achieve a high level of faith in God’s
individual Providence. Every child,
after all, can answer questions as to why we observe certain holydays.
Akedat Yitzchak (15th
Century)