JEWISH BUSINESS ETHICS: Introduction

"Many of us have a mistaken idea of what is within the compass or scope of our religious traditions. People know that lighting Hanukah candles is something you talk about with a rabbi, observance of the Shabbat, the laws of Kashrut, etc., but many people have an attitude that if I don't tell the rabbi how to run his business, the rabbi shouldn't tell me how to run mine. Very often, we live fragmented dichotomized lives where what we do in the office from 9 to 5 (or if you're a workaholic from 8 to 7), is our own private affair and then at home we observe the holidays, or the rituals of Judaism, on the weekends, or three-days-a-year, or whatever.

And yet we find in the Talmud a very interesting statement. The Talmud discusses what types of questions people are asked by God after their deaths. They come up to heaven, God asks them a variety of questions. The very first question that we are held accountable for after our deaths is "nasata venetata be-emuna?" which means "did you conduct your business affairs with honesty and with integrity?" This question is were we ethical in the conduct of our business. If you look throughout the Torah, you will see a constant juxtaposition between the ritual commands of Judaism and the ethical obligations between one human being and another. One verse may say, don't eat meat and milk together and the other verse will say, do not cheat in business, do not misrepresent, do not engage in fraud, because these are all part of the same religious structure. The notion of a dichotomy between ritual behavior and social behavior is a division that is totally foreign to Judaism because all of them are part of the same God-given basis of morality."

Adapted from "Jewish Business Ethics: An Introductory Perspective" by Rabbi Yitzchok Breitowitz

SHABBAT SHALOM!

Candle lighting in NYC             7:33 pm

Shabbat ends in NYC                 8:34 pm

SEPHARDIC RABBIS: Menahem de Lonzano (d.1611)

It is not known when and where Rabbi Menahem ben Judah  de Lonzano was born. Probably in Turkey or Italy. But we do know that at avery young age he settled in Yerushalayim (Jerusalem).   

Rabbi Lonzano had a very difficult life. He lost both his father and mother at a very young age, and throughout his entire life he was haunted by poverty and sickness . He was paralyzed in both feet and with the sight of one eye entirely lost.  He still was a great Talmudist, a poet and a distinguished grammarian.

Or Tora is perhaps his most famous work. This book is about the Masoretic Biblical text.  This deserves a brief explanation. The Sefer Tora, the Torah scroll, is written without vowels and without te'amim (punctuation marks). The Humashim, the printed books of Tora from which we study and follow the Torah reading, include the vowels, te'amim, etc. This is the Masoretic text. Many times there are small variations in the vowels and te'amim, almost irrelevant for beginners but very significant for the expert readers, teachers, rabbis and for those who publish Tora books. In this important work, "The Light of the Tora" rabbi Lonzano goes thru the text of the Pentateuch and clarifies the right Masoretic version. Rabbi Lonzano follows a rigorous method of comparing our texts with old Biblical texts, some of them -he says- were more than 600 years old,  to arrive to the most precise version of the Masoretic text.    

Another important book he wrote is the ma'arikh, a book that clarifies obscure words found in classic Rabbinic texts . The famous Rabbi Hida wrote about this book: "Rabbi Menahem de Lonzano elucidated many unclear words in the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Zohar in a rather scientific way... because he was an expert in the Greek, Arabic and Turkish language... I saw that while many rabbis interpreted those words according to their context, rabbi Lonzano clarified these words based on his solid knowledge [of philology] and the impressive collection of old books and manuscripts which preserved the most accurate version of these words."  

 

Rabbi De Lonzano died in 1611 and is buried in Har haZetim, Mt Olives Cemetery, Jerusalem.

Click here to download sefer OR TORA ( Amsterdam, 1659).

Click here to download sefer MA'ARIKH (Leipzig, Germany, 1853 ).  

PIRQE ABOT 1:7, tell me who your friends are...

ניתאי הארבלי אומר הרחק משכן רע ואל תתחבר לרשע 

ואל תתייאש מן הפורענות 

To prepare ourselves for Shabu'ot, the day we received the Tora, it is customary to study Pirqe Abot, the "Chapters of the Fathers" which is a tractate of the Mishna composed around the Second Century. This Mishna does no deal with the details of the observance of specific Mitzvot, as usually the Mishna does, but with practical Jewish wisdom, values and mores.      

There are many excellent English translations and commentaries of Pirqe Abot. My favorite one is the Me'am Loez, written by rabbi Ytzhaq Magriso, 18th century, Turkey. He wrote his commentary originally in Ladino (Judeo- Spanish. The book was published in 1747 and today we have a beautiful English translation of his book done by rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, z'l.   

Let me share with you a few insights from his book

This Mishna (1:7) talks about neighbors and friends. Exhorting us to be careful when choosing our company. 

*Rabbi Magriso explains the dangers of bad influences, via friendship. Influence, positive or negative, is not perceived while taking place. Bad company is like second-hand smoking. The harmful consequences are virtually inevitable, and we might realize those effects on us or on our children when it is already too late. 

* Rabbi Magriso offers his insights on real friendship.  He writes that "a good friend" is defined primarily by his or her character. A good friend is an individual who is able to be happy for your happiness. A person who is not jealous of your success.  A bad neighbor, on the contrary, is the one that somehow suffers or is envious of your blessings.  Find neighbors and be among friends who are not jealous of you, and save yourself from a lot of trouble. This is a big lesson, not just for identifying who is a good friend (which is not a simple task, because jealousy is not always easy to detect) but it is also a very important idea for ourselves, to improve our own character: We must learn to be genuinely happy, and never resentful, for the success of our friends. 

*Rabbi Magriso also wrote: What is the best way to assess someone's character? What is the way to see if our children are in a good path? Look at his or her circle of friends. Who your friends are is the best indicator of who you are, or who you are about to be.