Difficulty in precisely translating the word צדקה

The word tzedakah is untranslatable because it joins together two concepts that in other languages are opposites, namely charity and justice. Suppose, for example, that I give someone £100. Either he is entitled to it, or he is not. If he is, then my act is a form of justice. If he is not, it is an act of charity. In English (as with the Latin terms caritas and iustitia) a gesture of charity cannot be an act of justice, nor can an act of justice be described as charity. Tzedakah means both.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (New York: Shocken Books, 2005), 32.

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