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By the Middle Ages, community responsibility encompassed every aspect of life. The Jewish community regulated market prices so that the poor could purchase food and other basic commodities at cost. Wayfarers were issued tickets, good for meals and lodging at homes of members of the community, who took turns in offering hospitality. Both these practices anticipated "meal tickets" and modern food stamp plans. Some Jewish communities even established "rent control," directing that the poor be given housing at rates they could afford.
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Judaism sees creation as perfect and imperfect. When we consider the perfect G-d who made it [the earth] in goodness and proclaimed it to be good... we must acknowledge its perfection. But when we consider the evolutionary aspect of life, always striving to greater perfection, we must call it imperfect... This striving must be an integral part of any Jewish conception of creation- a conception that allots to humanity the responsibility for furthering the evolution of creation and bringing to completion the works of G-d.
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The “needy” who receive tsedakah have also come to be defined as the educationally, emotionally, and spiritually hungry as well as those who literally cry out for bread.
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"Feminism was an entry point for many women into Judaism and not an exit as other modern social movements had been." [from http://jwa.org/feminism/_html/JWA031.htm]
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Many people tend to see the worlds of the spiritual and the mundane as intrinsically conflictual; they see ritual and ethics as distinct and unrelated. The first, they suggest, is a matter of our quest for transcendence, our search for spiritual fulfillment, while the second ensures that the "nonspiritual" world in which we live is safe, habitable, and cordial.
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Humanity's role is to tend the garden, not to possess it; to "guard it and keep it" (Genesis 2), not to exploit it; to pass it on as sacred trust, as it was given. Even though we are given the authority to have dominion over the earth and its creatures, we are never allowed to own it, just like we cant own the waters or the air. "The land cannot be sold in perpetuity" (Lev. 25:23). The land is the commons,and it belongs to everyone equally and jointly.
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What is clear is that values can clash. Values may easily clash within the breast of a single individual. And it does not follow that some must be true and others false...The notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist seems to me not merely unobtainable- that is a truism- but conceptually incoherent. Some along the great goods cannot live together. That is a conceptual truth. We are doomed to choose, and every choice may entail an irreparable loss.
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Tikkun ha'olam is a phrase that drives legal decisions. It reflects an understanding that part of the law's purpose is to create a more just society, rather than a perfect one... Tikkun Ha'olam may be translated and understood as a recalibration of the world, a recognition that the world is out of balance and that legal remedies are needed in order to readjust the world to a better balance. The focus is not so much on the power of an individual to effect change, but rather on the power of law to correct systematic injustice.
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I would say that this is a feminist piece (made by a feminist, a Jew, and an American). The histories of the women in the Bible were nothing if not those of women ferociously pioneering for the rights of females. The print reflects those histories. They fought for, among other things, women’s right to own property, women’s inheritance rights, women’s struggle against abuse, and on and on. The print names names and then tells briefly the history of each woman mentioned in the Bible. I loved doing this print. I love celebrating our foremothers.
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Children confront us with our paradoxes and dishonesty, and we are exposed. You need to find an answer for every why — Why do we do this? Why don’t we do that? — and often there isn’t a good one. So you say, simply, because. Or you tell a story that you know isn’t true. And whether or not your face reddens, you blush. The shame of parenthood — which is a good shame — is that we want our children to be more whole than we are, to have satisfactory answers. My children not only inspired me to reconsider what kind of eating animal I would be, but also shamed me into reconsideration. 
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