Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money

by Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Jewish tradition teaches that after you have done new things consistently for a while, you begin to feel yourself becoming a different person.

(1) learn, (2) understand, and (3) practice.

Jewish tradition views a person’s quest for profit and wealth to be inherently moral.

If your chosen means of contributing to the world, and incidentally providing for your needs and desires, is immoral, then you must stop doing it because it will inevitably taint your entire existence.

Step one in the process of increasing your income is to begin wrapping yourself around these two related notions: (1) you are in business, and (2) the occupation of business is moral, noble, and worthy.

in order to acquire more money, you need to work on far more than merely learning new skills. You have to work on changing yourself.

Feeling virtuous about what you do is an enormous advantage and one that has been a part of Jewish tradition since time immemorial.

“Ben Azzai said, hasten to commit good acts and flee from misdeed since every good act encourages another in its wake, while every misdeed eases the way to the next.”

The origin of the word atone was when one viewed oneself as being at one with God.

A Jewish understanding of the Bible on the other hand, depends on what Jews refer to as the “Oral Torah,” whose ecclesiastical authority fully matches that of its written counterpart. It is from the oral Torah that Jews were able to learn under exactly which circumstances God permitted interest to be levied against a loan and precisely how that loan contract needed to be drawn.

gold, the ultimate medium of exchange, the metal of monetization, is described as good by God Himself.

the only real way to achieve wealth is to attend diligently to the needs of others and to conduct oneself in an honorable and trustworthy fashion.

To really succeed in whatever is the business of your choice, you have to come to understand and utterly absorb into your being the fundamentally true idea that your activities in your business are virtuous and moral, provided of course that you conduct your business affairs honestly and honorably. Absorb this lesson into your heart and into your soul, and you will have overcome a major hurdle on your road to financial achievement.

We must all understand that in a free, transparent, and honest marketplace, you cannot make the money in the first place without benefiting other people.

The rule is that people seldom excel at any occupation that deep down they consider unworthy; and even if they are neutral about the morality of business, that neutrality is a weak reed on which to build success.

On some subconscious level, humans find it convenient to view themselves not as very special beings touched by the finger of God, but rather as just a bunch of very smart animals. The smart animal view of humanity is convenient because it liberates people from complex moral analyses of their lives:

It is this Godly view of human beings as spiritual entities that allows people to view that completely nonanimal activity of accumulating wealth as good. Wealth creation is partially how people express their spirituality.

Just like an independent business owner, you too can find an additional customer—you can take a second job or develop a part time home based business. You undoubtedly have many products or services that could improve the lives of those around you. No matter what you do, the odds are that you are in business, and it is much tougher to succeed if, deep inside, you lack respect for the dignity and the morality of business.

YOUR PATH TO PROSPERITY

• Begin embracing these two related notions: (1) You are in business, and (2) the occupation of business is moral, noble, and worthy.

Jewish tradition classifies the real Ten Commandments of Scripture into two categories: (1) those that dictate the relationship between man and God (the first through fifth commandments) and (2) those that dictate the conduct of humans toward one another (the sixth through tenth commandments).

you honor your parents not to please them, but to please God.

In Hebrew, the Lord’s language, they are not called the Ten Commandments but the Ten Pronouncements. In actuality, God is teaching us five fundamental principles of relationships and providing us with two examples of each. The first example of each principle, pertaining to God, is found on the first tablet while the second example of each is found on the second tablet.

The first and most important principle of relationships is recognizing the other party has a right to exist, which you may not infringe upon.

The next principle of relationships is to recognize that every single relationship is unique.

rather than ask us to pray or bring sacrifices, or even take care of the poor, God focuses on a relationship building program.

a special problem in convalescence is the lack of contact with friends, neighbors, and family. Under those conditions, feelings of loneliness and then depression present themselves.5 Health and human companionship do go hand in hand,

Relationships need to already exist for the transaction to occur.

try to win friends not in order to influence people for your benefit, but for the sheer joy of forming and maintaining human relationships.

the way to get all the things that you want is to give enough other people the things that they want.

Trying to give other people what they want only to get what you want does not work very well in the long term.

On the face of it, the Biblical fifth commandment advises building genuine and sincere relationships with as many people as possible with no thought of reward. Beneath the surface, it informs you that paradoxically, reward will follow in proportion to the lack of self interest you projected while forming the relationships in the first place.

The clue is found within the Hebrew word for “friend,” chaver. The etymological root of that word is chav, which means indebtedness or obligation. The idea is that friendship is forged and maintained by the dynamic creating and discharging of obligation on a continuous basis.

The Hebrew word for “thank you,” hodeh, is the same as the Hebrew word for “admission” or “confession”—expressing gratitude is equivalent to confessing subservience.

The key to knowing whether an activity or an experience will enhance a relationship is to measure how active or passive the roles of the people involved are.

You are trying to warm your life with new relationships. This one single point is both the hardest to absorb into your being and, at the same time, the most valuable clue to relationship building.

you need to maximize your interaction with other people.

Never miss or ignore an opportunity to make new friends and to nurture existing ones.

One must be master of some way to help others live their lives.

no matter how you serve your fellow humans, think of yourself as doing something fascinating; see yourself in business, rather than merely being something.

You need to do everything in your power to cultivate an interest in what you do.

the difference between being a wage slave and being in business, and so should you. You can be an employee without being a wage slave.

an employee can do exactly the same thing. He can and must consider himself to be in business. All he must do is view his employer as one of his customers.

Make lots of new friends, try to help them, and make sure that they all know how you could help them and that you are eager to do so.

“What do you do for a living?” It is a legitimate question because the inquirer really wants to know what the person does for other people.

When I refer to service, I do not mean serving the customer, I mean instilling in ourselves a love of service.

there is nothing shameful in being servants, or people who serve. This is how traditional Jewish thought sees it.

To love others does not mean simply to feel gushing emotions welling up in your heart; rather, and more important, it means to give to them—to serve them. God wants you to love other people. You do so through service. And He rewards you for it.

Zimmer said, “When you get down to what really happens in the retail world, it’s all about customers interacting with employees.”

The secret to learning how to love serving others is to develop the character trait of humility. It will win you many new friends and delight all your old ones.