poverty

Distinctions

ani (עני)

Bava Metzia 111b: given the choice, hire the ani rather than the evyon, for the evyon is worse off but accustomed to it and unashamed to ask for handouts, while the ani is too embarrassed to ask and so his need goes unmet. So an ani is poor but keeps up a normal front. Rabbi Avraham Bedersi HaPenini (Chosam Tochnis) derives ani (with an ayin) from inui, affliction: strictly it is anyone afflicted by anything, though in nearly every context the affliction is financial. Rabbi Yehuda Kalatz (Sefer HaMussar): the ani works hard his whole life and manages only a meager living.

evyon (אביון)

Related to ta'av, desire: full of wants he cannot fill. Bedersi draws the striking consequence that a rich man who wants more than he has and cannot get it is in that respect an evyon, which sharpens the Mishnah "Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot" (Avos 4:1). Rabbi Yehuda Kalatz agrees on the definition and adds a moral edge: the evyon brought it on himself by refusing to try, having no trade, no skill, no business, and not even the knack of appealing for charity.

The gradation carries halachic weight in matanos la'evyonim on Purim. Rabbi Yair Chaim Bachrach and Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch: give preferentially to an evyon rather than an ordinary ani. Rabbi Yechiel Michel Epstein and Rav Chaim Kanievsky read it the other way: the Megillah says the gifts may be given even to an evyon, and certainly to an ani, whose need is more pressing precisely because he will not ask. Rabbi Avraham ben Yitzchak HaLevi Tamach, on Eishes Chayil, reads the doubled clause "she stretched her palm to an ani and sent forth her hands to an evyon" (Mishlei 31:20) as one hand for the ani and two for the evyon, whose need is greater.

misken (מסכן)

Related to sakanah, danger: the forced austerity endangers his life. Rabbi Yehuda Kalatz: one who looks to others for support and gets mockery instead. Rabbi Shlomo Aharon Wertheimer: so poor and beaten down that people take him for a madman and pay him no attention.

rash (רש)

Tied to yerushah, inheritance, in two directions. One: property dispossessed by others, so that he has lost everything. Two (Wertheimer): a poor man son of a poor man, who never knew prosperity and inherited his poverty from the cradle.

dal (דל)

Literally reduced or subtracted. Malbim: dal is anyone who lost money, even one not poor enough to take charity, which is why dal never appears in a charity context. Rabbi Yehuda Kalatz: specifically a man once rich who lost his wealth. Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim: the dalet-lamed root primarily means drawing water from a well (hence deli, a pail), borrowed for poverty because a man emptied of his fortune is a well emptied of its water.

dach (דך)

Crushed, sharing a root with medochah, a pestle. He looks smashed because want of food has left him gaunt. Bedersi: even a rich man may be called dach if illness has made him thin.

mach (מך)

Also crushed, but abstractly rather than physically: at the mercy of others, squashed by having to subordinate himself to them. Bedersi offers an alternative: the mach need not have a low income at all, but is pressed by obligations beyond his means. Pappenheim traces the root to the kaf element of striking, one struck by bad mazal.

ish techachim (איש תככים)

Mishlei 29:13, listed as a word for the poor in some of the midrashic lists and not in others. Wertheimer locates the dispute in the root. If the root is the kaf element, it means stricken, like mach. If the root is tav-vav-kaf, it is from toch, inside or middle, and names a man of means (he has something inside) or one of middling circumstances, not a poor man at all.

heilech (הלך)

From "going," and it occurs once in Tanach in this sense. Either the poor man who goes door to door raising money, or the man whose assets have all gone. It can equally mean any panhandler or itinerant peddler whatever his means, which is likely why it appears in only some of the midrashic lists.

Rendering guidance

• Trap: English "poor" will absorb ani, evyon, dal, rash, and mach at once. Reserve "poor" for ani, and give each of the others its own word.
• The pair עני ואביון is graded, not a doublet: "the poor and the destitute," in that order. Where a source darshens the order (the Purim matanos discussion, Mishlei 31:20), a flattened "the poor and needy" erases the argument.
• Matanos la'evyonim: leave it transliterated in a frum text. If it must be rendered, "gifts to the destitute," never "gifts to the poor," which contradicts the halachic discussion above.
• Dal against ani: since Malbim ties dal to loss rather than to eligibility for charity, "the reduced" or "one brought low" beats "the poor man" in a passage about a fall from wealth. In Vayikra's ki yamuch achicha language, mach is "brought low," not "impoverished."
• Dach and mach are near-homophones with opposite emphases, physical against circumstantial. Where both appear, "emaciated" and "downtrodden" keep them apart.
• Misken is the only one of these with contempt built in. "Wretched" carries it; "poor" does not.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "The Poor and Unfortunate," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 13 Iyar 5779 (2019-05-18): https://articles.ohr.edu/articles/the-poor-and-unfortunate; raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/8245-the-poor-and-unfortunate.md. The nine-word lists are in Midrash Tanchuma, Behar 3; Midrash Mishlei ch. 22; and Vayikra Rabbah 34:6. Other loci cited: Bava Metzia 111b; Avos 4:1; Mishlei 29:13 and 31:20. The single heilech pasuk is Shmuel II 12:4 (the article prints I Sam. 12:4). Bedersi, Chosam Tochnis; Rabbi Yehuda Kalatz, Sefer HaMussar; Malbim; Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim; Wertheimer.