If asked which mitzvah obligates us to help the poor, we would immediately respond, “The mitzvah of tzedakah.” There’s only one problem: no such mitzvah exists in the Torah. Nowhere in the Torah does it say that if a poor person asks us for money, we must give it to him. But wait, you say, that can’t be right. In this week’s parasha it says explicitly, “For you shall surely open you hand to him and you shall surely give him sufficient for his need, in that which he lacks” (15:8)! But that’s not really what the verse says. The