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helping other people make up for their deficiencies by supplying their needs is how one makes an honorable living.
Jewish tradition views a person’s quest for profit and wealth to be inherently moral.
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.
“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.”3
The Jewish hierarchy of charity regards lending someone money to go into business as more noble than simply giving him the money. The latter condemns the recipient to be a beggar without enough self respect to launch his or her own enterprise. However, lending money to a needy man elevates him into an independent businessman. This way his dignity is preserved, and he retains the psychological self image so necessary to conducting business successfully.
The main reasons that Jews found their way into the fields of finance were undoubtedly trustworthiness and their conviction that they were fulfilling a necessary need in society.
During the seven days of Creation, the word good is used seven times as God brings various parts of the world into being and expresses profound satisfaction at how they came out, as it were. Amazingly, the eighth appearance of the word good is applied to nothing other than the eternal symbol of money—gold.7
It is perfectly kosher to ask God for money.
The Talmud advises worshippers in the Jerusalem temple who wish to increase their wealth to pray facing the south, toward the direction of the table that held the ceremonial bread, because the bread was mystically linked to money.
Deep within traditional Jewish culture lies the conviction that 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.
“May the Lord bless you and safeguard you.”10
“I know it’s no great shame to be poor; but it’s no great honor either.”
Money certainly isn’t everything, but it mustn’t be underrated either.
Do Walton, Forstmann, and Sloan and thousands of less well known good Samaritans feel the same pride about the good they do in their day to-day activities? Tens of thousands of people are able to take care of their families because they have a good job at Wal Mart. In addition, millions of U.S. families acquire their household needs at fair prices.
Once a trip by commercial air carrier became an exercise in frustration with absurd Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines and indignities, inexplicable delays and cancellations, and inconvenient schedules and connections, any business professional whose time is worth a few hundred dollars an hour or more should be compelled by his boss to fly chartered jet.
Few people can truly excel at occupations about which they entertain moral reservations.
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.
You must respect the dignity and the morality of business. You must see the activity of making money itself as good, regardless of whether you use the money you earn for good purpose.
in a free, transparent, and honest marketplace, you cannot make the money in the first place without benefiting other people. If you subsequently choose to give money away, that is fine but it is not the justification for making money.
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.
Increasing numbers of Americans view wealth not as the morally legitimate rewards of risk, innovation, and effort, but as an unjust and morally suspect outcome. So pervasive is the message that almost nobody is completely immune to its insidious effects.
When organizations, countries, or companies allow themselves to believe that making money lacks social value, they should not be surprised to see their economic performance decline.
The majority of decent, hardworking Americans regard greed and selfishness not as virtues but as vices. For this reason, attempting to defend business by conceding that business is about greed—but, never mind, greed is actually good—is doomed to fail.
There is truth in the frivolous old aphorism that claims that women tend to seek one man for their many needs while men tend to seek many women for their one need.
“It is natural” has never been an adequate defense for immoral behavior in the Jewish legal system.
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.
The thirteenth century Jewish transmitter, Rabeinu Bachya, explained that a man’s active participation in the creation of his wealth is a mark of his spiritual greatness.
While you may think the way you make your living has little to do with how CEOs of major corporations make theirs, the fact is that with very few exceptions, most people develop revenue by doing or supplying things for others.
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.
If the heads of Fortune 500 companies are being excoriated as immoral exploiters, so are you. The difference is only one of degree.
Begin embracing these two related notions: (1) You are in business, and (2) the occupation of business is moral, noble, and worthy.
According to a landmark study involving 222 cardiac patients and carried out by Nancy Frasure Smith of the Montreal Heart Institute, patients who suffer heart attacks and are depressed are four times as likely to die in the following six months as those who are not depressed.
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
Sitting around wishing for more money accomplishes nothing. Daydreaming or reciting self-affirmation mantras accomplishes even less. Only by actively and perhaps even joyously interacting with other people can the circumstances of wealth creation be set in place.
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 success everyone seeks is, in terms of this fifth commandment, only a reward for building those relationships that the Author of the Ten Commandments wanted His children to form anyway.
If there is one lesson to be found in Jewish business success, it is this: Find opportunities to become friendly with many people.
the more opportunities people have to interact and to convey information to one another, the more wealth is created for every participant.
Never miss or ignore an opportunity to make new friends and to nurture existing ones.
Bestowing your hospitality on someone is the very best way of establishing a bond.
Life is a miracle, provided you have many friends and provided everyone knows what everyone else does best.
no matter how you serve your fellow humans, think of yourself as doing something fascinating; see yourself in business, rather than merely being something.
Trying to earn money doing something you dislike is equivalent to boxing with one hand tied behind your back.
Too many people fixate on a very small number of careers and remain unaware of the myriad of amazing opportunities the working world offers.
You can be an employee without being a wage slave.
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.
How you help your fellow humans is a proud part of your identity. The only person to be embarrassed by the question is one who has no answer.
If you cannot wrap yourself around the notion that other humans are worthy of your committed service and that you are not diminished but are instead elevated by providing that service, you will never really excel at what you do.
there is nothing shameful in being servants, or people who serve.
service, giving of oneself to others, is at the core of what it means to be a human and at the core of the quest for career success.
God wants you to love other people. You do so through service. And He rewards you for it.
