Jewish Poverty

 The poorest people in Israel are a large (500,000 person) group of Haredi (religious) people.  The men study in yeshivot and at age 18 marry and continue studying. Not that they are inactive, because caring for a large family is work and to fulfill the innumerable religious customs up to their tinfoil extremes (see the pic of a Haredi kitchen during Pessach) is work, but they do not hold regular jobs and live off Social Insurance. They are Jews, a people historically linked to commerce and money management, but the Haredim choose to live an intellectual life and material hardship. 

This holy poverty also characterized the halutzim, pioneers, who left Europe to dedicate their lives to manual labor in the Holy Land. Their extremism went to the point that they had no personal property nor even shirts. They lived in communes permanently exposed to cruel criticism for bizboozim (wasting resources) such as putting too much sugar in the tea. 

Jewish mass poverty exists, and in our days it is a choice. Other peoples have fakirs and mendicant monks, but our poor are a mass movement. Myself feel the call to holiness too, but for me it is late. Maybe the next time.