Shalom:
I would like to dedicate this to the Martyrs of Mumbia. While the world press is giving much attention to one Chabad rabbi who perished, there were two other rabbis with him as well. Equally important there were other Jews and other people of all religions. What the press didn't give much 'column' to is that a contingent of Jewish Spiritual Renewal Jews were in Mumbai to learn meditation techniques and an American Jewish man and his daughter , from this group, were killed by the terrorists. So to all, our prayers of Kaddish.
The Talmud in many places gives investment advice and abhors risk and begs one to be cautious. They teach this whether one is putting his wallet at risk, or his life or limbs. The Talmud also calls this world an "upside down world'' [olam hafukh rain] where righteous folks are poor, evil ones are rich, fortunes are made and then are lost.( Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Batra 10b)
""In the case of a board stretched from one roof to the next, even if it is ever so broad, it is forbidden to walk across it. Why? For on this basis we learn that Satan takes up his prosecution only in a time of danger. Rav said: He who dwells in a shaky house turns the angel of death into his creditor (i.e., all his past sins are visited on him) Said Rabbi Levi: In three situations, Satan is waiting to prosecute: he who makes a trip all by himself, he who sleeps by himself in a dark place and he who sets sail on the Great Sea (i.e., the Mediterranean). (Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Shabbat 2:6)
Now in normal Talmudic cases Satan acts as a prosecuting lawyer on Rosh Ha Shana. But for these careless acts, he immediately prosecutes the case before the Heavenly Court. Now this is interesting because Satan, in the Talmud, is called God's yetzer ha ra, and Satan is called our individual yetzer ha ra.[Talmud Bavli Bava Batra 16a]. So the one who entices us to sin, is also the one who judges us. This may seem like cosmic entrapment, but since the yetzer ha ra lives within each of us, we have freedom of choice to listen to it or not. If we wish to listen to it, we are the ones who cause our own punishment and put ourselves in our own Mitzraim, a bondage of self.
The Talmud is full of investment advice as many of the Rabbis were the richest men in their times. Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Metzia 42a instructs us to invest one-third of our money in real estate, another third in business and another third in ready cash.
There is no life without risk. But there are ways of mitigating risk. And the sages teach us to do this. On sea voyages on the Mediterranean, they advise not to go clear into the sea, but to always hug the land and be with in a short distance of a port. Ironically our modern jets fly this way. They don't fly across the Atlantic, but hug the East Coast, Canada, Greenland, Iceland and the British Isles, before heading off to parts of Europe. So one who 'sets sail on the Great Sea' and doesn't hug the coast, is asking for trouble.
Making a trip alone or sleeping in a dark place alone was as much a risk then as it is now. From college campus security to inner city police, people are asked to call free ride services or pay for a taxi rather than walk a dark street alone. While traveling alone now has less risk, there are places where one is more apt to be harmed than other places.
The Talmud gives much discussion to Satan and for most of the time he is our own yetzer ha ra, leading us to stupidity and chet. If we do a risky acts, we are going to find the negative results of that act, not during the days of awe, but during the days of ouch...then and now.
The concept of walking across a board from house to house, no mater how wide, is a parable of unneeded risk. Note how the rabbis are not disallowing walking across a board from a hill top to a hill top, with a dangerous river valley below. In this house-case, one can walk out the front door of one house and safely walk into the front door of the second house and take a ladder to the second house's roof. All without risk.
The rabbis were adverse to unneeded risk. Indeed many martyred themselves dealing with the Romans and others knowing darn well they were engaging in risky behavior. But in their minds it was for the welfare of the Jewish people and for God. It was needed. They did not advise putting one's life at stake for money, and actually abhorred risky gambling, stating that dice throwers and pigeon racers couldn't give testimony in court.(Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin 24b- 25b)
The great English economist John Maynard Keynes looked at Wall Street and wrote that the capital development of the United States had become "the by-product of the activities of a casino," and added, "It is usually agreed that casinos should, in the public interest, be inaccessible and expensive. And perhaps the same is true of stock exchanges."
We should recall that the main objective of the Torah and Talmud is not the efficiency of capital markets but individual spiritual development. From this point of view, there is still a vast difference between these two type of 'growth markets'.
The Talmud points out two ethical problems with gambling.(Ibid) The Mishnah states that a habitual gambler is disqualified from giving testimony. The Talmud then asks, What is it that a gambler has done wrong? The passage proceeds as follows: "Rami bar Hama said, 'Because it is a conditional commitment, and a conditional commitment is not binding.' Rav Sheshet said, This is not considered a conditional commitment . Rather, he is not occupied with settling the world."
According to Rami bar Hama, the problem with gambling is that the winner often takes unfair advantage of the loser, who is not always fully aware of the adverse odds he faces. The professional gambler is generally a hustler who preys on the ignorance and weakness of the amateur.
According to Rav Sheshet, habitual gambling leads to an easy-come-easy-go attitude toward money and an anti-social, underworld mentality of contempt for productive work. The gambler is unmoved by the ethical and legal sanctions against lying in court, because his whole life is just game and a gamble.
The economic implication of speculation, i.e gambling in the stock market, is that it encourages the efficient hoarding of resources. For instance, when speculators hoard a commodity in anticipation of a future shortage, the result is that adequate stockpiles will be available when the supply shortfall occurs but at a high price. In the framework of modern competitive markets, speculation contributes to exploitation of scarce resources.
The sages of the Talmud looked suspiciously on this phenomenon and subjected it to various restrictions. For example, they limited hoarding to producers and forbade the participation of professional speculators. Why did our rabbis want to regulate such an important economic activity?
One obvious reason is economic. While speculation is efficient in competitive markets, one must acknowledge that markets are not always competitive and impartial. Sometimes speculators collude, cornering markets and creating artificial shortages in order to inflate prices. Even economists recognize that in this case speculation is extremely harmful; instead of alleviating hunger it will create hunger.
But there is also another, more profound, reason for the restrictions on speculation. In marketplace regulation as in so many other aspects of Jewish law, economic considerations were not in the forefront of the thinking of our sages. Most often, they put human considerations first. This principle applies to the restrictions on hoarding, as we can see from the source of the regulations.
The Talmud's censure of hoarding is based in the context of the following prophetic passage from the book of Amos:8:4-6 "Hear this, you who would swallow the needy and destroy the downtrodden of the land; who say, When will the month pass so that we may sell grain, and the Sabbatical year so that we may open our granaries?... so that we may buy the poor for money and the needy for a pair of shoes."
What worried the prophet above all was not the economic consequences of hoarding but the tragic human consequences, for it destroys the solidarity of society. The speculators, instead of sharing the general interest in relief, now have a private interest in continued distress, which will enrich them. They ask, "When will the month pass?" Rashi explains that they are waiting impatiently for the harvest season to pass, because then there will be a shortage of grain in the market and prices will rise.
Beyond this, the speculators are enticed to go beyond their desire for monetary enrichment, which is justifiable within bounds, and are seeking dominance over others: "So that we may buy the poor for money." This is a tendency that the Torah repeatedly condemns, since we are all servants of God. "For the children of Israel are slaves to Me"--slaves to Him, and not to other human beings. This ethical problem with speculation is very similar to Rav Sheshet's concern about gambling. The speculator becomes alienated from the concerns of working people, who depend on reasonable prices for commodities. The first result is that the common people are exploited, and the ultimate result is that they may be abused and enslaved.
It is a fundamental ethical idea that we should try to ally our economic and human interests so that our desire for gain does not lead us into betraying our ideals. A simple example illustrates this concept:
Imagine a member of a baseball team just before the World Series. If his team wins, he will earn a huge sum of money; if they lose, his earnings will be far less. Economic theory states that in order to hedge his risks, the player ought to bet against his own team. But human nature would view such a bet as a shocking betrayal of loyalty, even if it were so small that it is not an incentive to throw the game.
Likewise, our sages were concerned that one particular kind of speculation--namely, betting on disaster--may sometimes have a negative effect on the solidarity of our society.
Most kinds of speculation are not regulated by Jewish law and are considered perfectly acceptable. However, each individual speculator should occasionally make sure that he has not created a situation where he is "betting against the home team" and subtly alienating himself from the community.
When I worked with my own will to make money and get a job as my motivating factor, I may have gotten jobs and pay checks, but that is all. When I instead finally realized that God's will for me was to be on this earth to do love and service for others, and prayed to God each day, to show me how I could do that I had a fantastic professions, good remuneration, and naturally knew to share it with others. In other words, when I stopped looking for work or income for my self and started looking how to be of service to others, and opened up my hands, and not closed them in a fist, God filled my hands over flowingly.
The pusuk from Pirkei Avot of 'Who is happy? He is who happy with what he has" is 100% true. None of my family has invested in greedy deals. Its ironic that all of us never discussing investment stragy, except with the common bond of being Jewish and having wisdom from the Talmud, have all invested in the same way and are not effected by this economic down turn as none of us have loans, none of us owe interest, none of us bought on credit, and in a sense, we followed Jewish law, not even realizing it.
All of our homes are firm and not shaky.
Judaism teaches us to learn for ourselves. Indeed Hillel tells us to be nice to our fellows and then tells us to go and study. We were never supposed to be a religion learning bits of something or nothing, from a bimah, on a Shabbat service, depending on who we were lucky to draw as a rabbi. We had the wisdom to knew the government was lying to us, that ARM were a shell game, and that the portfolios telling our friends that they were now worth 5 times what they really were, so they began to spend like Michael Jackson, so now all they have left is the plastic surgery, was going to burst some day soon.
Unfortunately, we are all interconnected, and while none need to sell our homes we have neighbors who have foreclosed, have homes near us that are empty, or that the banks have rented to folks who are not following neighborhood covenants. All of us had the responsibility to reprove, according to Leviticus, and none of us did. Hence none of us remain guiltless.
Those that sold ARMs and those that bought them knowing they were buying homes way beyond their means are liable according to the Talmud Bavli Tractate Bava Kamma 20a:'' One who derives benefit and the other suffers loss is liable.''
One of my adult answered from his experience about how this economic mess could have been averted. H wrote: "I am writing just from my Jewish community which is hurting economically. Since I came from the Reform movement and have reclaimed my Judaism thru Jewish Spiritual Renewal, one way, the economic crisis could have been averted is if the rabbis in the Reform movement taught Judaism and God's will. The Oneg Shabbat conversations were all about gelt , greed, upgrading to new homes, boats, more toys, and my rabbi never saying, ''this is not appropriate for Shabbat'', nor giving a sermon about greed in general. My ex-Reform temple used the ARM to get a loan to expand the temples, which does not even have Saturday services, and now with the bad economy and the ARM's due, have to increase dues, and are loosing members left and right. Ego, the yetzer ha ra, and Satan indeed will prosecute a shaky house, even if it is a temple.''
(Note: We have on the other hand all traveled to Reform temples were Rabbis preach justice and do not allow non-Jewish behavior to occur. Like in medicine there are rabbis who are great and take their role seriously, and rabbis who are mediocre and give in to the congregants' yetzer ha ra.)
As far as for those who made risky investments, well, if one was in a pension plan and could not self direct, their brokers need to pony up and pay back those commissions. But for those who day traded and gambled and took out second mortgages to buy pie in the sky, the Torah tells us we are going to work six days a week by the sweat of our brow. [ Gen. 3:19] They may have to begin to do this. Life is work, and Judaism does not look down upon work. Our sages all had 'real' jobs. They did not ''use the Torah for a spade.'' (Talmud Bavli Tractate Pirkei Avot 4:7). There is no easy money, and even if one marries rich, it is no free lunch.
As Rabbi A. Meir posits, of course watching the financial news each day it can seem that we are sailing in uncharted waters. When have we been faced with an economic crisis this alarming? The commentators tell us that we have to look back to the Great Depression for an analogous situation, which certainly provides cold comfort. What are we to make of the situation that we find ourselves in? Everyone has their favorite villain to blame for this crisis, but we are suspicious of anyone who will place the blame for something so large at the foot of others without looking inward for responsibility as the Talmud teaches us. Perhaps we all share some of the blame for our current financial situation. Maybe we forgot the riskiness of debt and the true meaning of investment.
"Rav Yehuda ben Shila said in Rav Assi's name in Rabbi Yochanan's name: There are six things, the interest of which one collects in this world, while the principal remains for him for the world to come: hospitality to visitors, visiting the sick, devotion in prayer, early attendance at the house of study, raising one's children to the study of the Torah, and giving one's neighbor the benefit of the doubt. But that is not so? For we have learned: These are the things which one performs and enjoys the interest in this world, while the principal remains for him for the world to come: honoring one's parents, deeds of loving kindness, and bringing peace to people, while the study of the Torah surpasses them all." ( Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 127a)
There seems to be a debate about what investments provide the highest yield. These are the ultimate sure-thing deals, ones that provide continual dividends that we can live on right now and also guarantee a return even when we have moved beyond the great beyond! Forget about credit default swaps, these securities guarantee true insulation from risk, Meir suggests.
The rabbis may have argued about which mitzvoth fall into the category of investments that pay off now and later but the message is clear: our actions have consequences that we feel every day, Meir continues. If we invest in making the world around us better, our own lives are improved. Pick any action from the list and you can see the benefits of the investment. Take the first item: if our homes are truly open to guests, if our community is welcoming to visitors we all benefit from a culture of hospitality.
This text from the Talmud demands that we reframe our understanding of the words "investment," "principal," and "interest." Our conventional economy sees these concepts as personal vehicles for individual, material wealth. Jewish tradition sees these ideas as methods of communal enrichment and personal, spiritual fulfillment. The rabbis of the Talmud may have been the originators of the concept of "human capital," believing that to invest in the enrichment of our parents or in bringing peace between those who quarrel is the greatest of all investments. These actions help others, but they bear fruit for our own lives as well.
Meir concludes spot on that investing in a stock or mutual fund is ultimately a gamble but it demands little responsibility on our part; we hand over our money and watch it go up or down. Investing in mitzvoth has a guarantee of success, but requires our constant attention and effort. If there is any silver lining to this cloud of a crisis, we hope that it will help us to refocus on the priorities of life and importance of responsibility. May the future bring us success in all our investments, material and spiritual.
Shalom,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
JEWISH RENEWAL
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC
BLUFFTON, SC
SAVANNAH, GA
credit to Rabbi Dr.A. Meir
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