LEV1022 True, Israel of old had its rich and its poor. But the Torah made ample provision for the poor, and more important--no group could ever gain permanent control of enough land, and with it wealth and control, to make the country a nightmare of contrast between the fabulously rich and powerful on the one hand, and the miserable, illiterate starving peasant worker on the other. The Almighty's words are clear: "the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for Mine is the land; for you are strangers and sojourners [temporary dwellers] with Me" [this verse]. Israel could never have a chasm so stark and unbridgeable between landed aristocracy and starving poor that it would need a Lenin or Stalin to seize the land, or a Castro to take from the rich and give to the poor.