Economic Ethics

Abstract

Abstract Questions about people’s uneven access to material and cultural resources are central to contemporary discourse about the nature of society, obligations of the well-off to share the benefits they enjoy, and the role of governments and individuals in approaches to the causes and consequences of wealth and poverty. These questions are increasingly informed by awareness of intersectionality, that is, the ways in which economic status interplays with attitudes toward and conditions experienced by people of various races, genders, classes, and ethnicities, however these are culturally and socially defined. This chapter focuses on attitudes to and recommendations for dealing with poverty in the legal traditions preserved in the biblical books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, and then turns to a Tannaitic halakik midrash Sifra to explore how the early Rabbinic tradition interprets a few key verses in Leviticus. The preserved legal texts in the Pentateuch admit of variation, nuance, and development.