> nobody has deemed benefits to be tzedaka.
You are right. R Henneman dismisses the idea that non-Jews support poor w/ tzedokah. To clarify: my problem with that is that Yoreh Deah that in one place uses the word tzedoka, but in others more general “depending on people”. And, again, all of that is about people who are in financial difficulty they can not get out of by themselves. Even that seems to be a problem. Not about taking money for poor and use them to support learning. The source about learning all seem to allow it when taken from Jews for learning. I am not able to find a source that allows using public assistance funds for poor to use them to support learning instead. Does anyone else have such sources?