m. In an ideal world, he maintains, there ought to be no rich and no poor, no lenders and no borrowers; everyone should receive from the Almighty exactly what they require to live. But, in His infinite wisdom, this is not the manner in which the Lord created the world. He provides certain individuals with excess funds, expecting them to help those who have insufficient funds, appointing them His “cashiers” or “ATMs.” Hence you must read the verse as “If you have [excess] money to lend to my nation, [understand] that what ought to have gone to the poor individual is with you.” You were merely given the poor person’s money in trust; your extra funds actually belong to him!
If you understand this fundamental axiom – that the rich person is actually holding the poor person’s money in trust as an agent of the divine – then everything becomes clear. Of course, the lender may not act as a creditor, because she is only giving the poor man what is in actuality his. And of course one dare not charge interest, because the money you lent out was never yours in the first place.
This is the message of the exodus from Egypt, the seminal historic event which formed and hopefully still informs us as a nation: no individual ought ever be owned by or even indebted to another individual. We are all owned by and must be indebted only to God. This fundamental truth is the foundation of our traditional legal system which is uniquely just and equitable: it is especially considerate of the needs of the downtrodden and enslaved, the poor and the infirm, the orphan and the widow, the stranger and the convert, the “chained wife” and the indigent forced to sell their land. From this perspective, not only must we submit to Jewish law, but it is crucial that our judges be certain that Jewish law remains true to its ethical foundations