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treasurer (the gizbar or the gabbai), who would go from house to house
once weekly, gathering money and bread to be distributed to the poor on
Fridays.^50
Once collected, Jewish leaders carefully regulated the ways in which
charity was meted out. The most important was undoubtedly the weekly
pre-Sabbath distribution, probably carried out by the same treasurer sent
to collect these funds.^51 The communal leaders kept a list of weekly recipi-
ents, which included those unable to provide for themselves and religious
scholars. Special distributions were probably also organized in honor of
holidays, when extra charity was collected.^52 The weekly distribution of
charity was unique to Jews; most Muslim pious endowments provided
for the poor on a daily basis through soup kitchens or other charitable
institutions.^53
Among Jews, even the most private kinds of giving were regulated. In
1757, the communal leaders passed a taqanah limiting the amount indi-
viduals could give to various classes of beggars: talmidei hakhamim could
receive the most, followed by “important people” and then by everyone
else.^54 Only emissaries from Palestine were exempt from such limitations.
The authors did not specify how these rules were to be enforced—in fact,
their strict observation seems unlikely at best. Nonetheless, the limitation
on direct, private giving indicates the great degree of control exercised by
Jewish leaders in Meknes over every aspect of charity.^55
Although shelihim (Jewish emissaries) hailing from Palestine were ex-
empt from regulations on individual giving, the communal leaders found
other ways to control donations to the holy land. Emissaries from Pal-
estine arrived regularly in all the major cities of Morocco.^56 The account
book of an emissary from Jerusalem who arrived in Meknes in 1895 re-
cords the donations of 136 individuals (or groups of individuals), as well as
the sums of a number of qupot.^57 Numerous taqanot regulated donations
for these emissaries; their frequency indicates both the importance of
charity to Palestine and the high level of control to which it was subject.^58
Meknesi Jews’ practice of sending significant amounts of charity to their
holy cities was similarly prevalent among Muslims, who regularly made
donations to the poor in Mecca and Medina.^59
Although the leaders of Meknes’s Jewish community left some deci-
sions regarding charity for Palestine up to individuals, Jews were not free
to give entirely as they saw fit. The donations given directly to the emis-
sary when he arrived or those collected during the year and delivered in