must not make oneself poor. Given that nearly all Jews of their day were poor or middle-class (even the rich of that time were only rich relative to the poor), they ruled that one should not give away more than a fifth of his income to charity, while yet being obligated to give away no less than 10% of his income to charity. Many pages of the Talmud are devoted to encouragement in giving charity, and this topic is the focus of many religious books and rabbinic responsa. In addition to voluntary individual donations to the poor, the Mishnah required communities to supply each person in need with daily food rations and a place to sleep, funded by collections from the population. Ethics of speech Evil-speaking is a sin regarded with intense aversion both in the Bible and in rabbinical literature. The technical term for it in the latter is lashon hara, "the evil tongue." In the Bible, the equivalent words are: dibbah, meaning "talk" in a sinister sense; rakhil, the "merchandise" of gossip with which the talebearer goes about; and ragal, a verb, denoting the "peddling" of slander. As these words indicate, that which is condemned as lashon hara denotes all the deliberate or malicious accusations or even the exposure of truthful information which has the purpose of injuring one's neighbor, that is, calumny proper, and also the idle but mischievous chatter which is equally forbidden, though it is not slander. The Babylonian Talmud indicates that putting one's fellow human to shame is in the same category as murder and at one point describes slander, talebearing, and evil talk as worse than the three cardinal sins of murder, immorality, and idolatry. The spreading of evil reports, even when true, is branded as a calumny. Listening to slanderous gossip, or the causing of suspicion, or the provoking of unfavorable remarks about a neighbor is also forbidden. One commandment in the Torah is to use one's speech to correct, admonish, or reprove others (Leviticus 19:17). Some Jews have explained this as a matter of "giving musar" (discipline, instruction) in line with a verse from Proverbs 1:8: "Hear, my child, the discipline (musar) of your father, and do not forsake the teachings of your mother." Some rabbis have emphasized the importance of what to say when giving musar, to whom one should speak, and when (how often) one should "give musar." One