Jewish teachings are very much aware of experience of hunger and the effect it can have on human behaviour. I am horrified by this passage in Deuteronomy, which describes such desperate straits as to find mothers eating their own children. The least horrific part is Deuteronomy 28:53, but it gets worse in its psychological description of how hunger and self-preservation can affect our sense of humanity.

Only someone with the most vivid of imaginations or with experience of the sieges that Deuteronomy describes could write such a terrifying image. Shocking though it is, we must be always mindful of what a person might be driven to through poverty and hunger and be scandalised that these problems persist today. 

Judaism constructs quite incredible systems of tzedakah to alleviate poverty but the depressing message that there will always be poor in the land (Deuteronomy 15:11) echoes on. 

Tzedakah is a word that implies justice, righteousness and balance, not just giving money. With this in mind, there is a tale in the Jerusalem Talmud in which Rabbi Judah Hanasi rebukes his students for lacking compassion for a fellow-student who lived on the edge of the line that determined whether he could receive charity. The tale reminds us that a line must be set but our hearts should never become hardened to need.

Accordingly, Rabbi Dr Israel Mattuck (Britain’s first Liberal rabbi), writes that, “Justice requires that society should provide for the needs of its weaker members… to protect them from oppression by the strong and rich. It meant also to protect them against want, to supply them with the means of livelihood.”

Our thoughts are turning to Yom Kippur appeals and our own tzedakah giving – let our hearts be renewed in compassion and our hands be opened widely to those in need.