Small tidbits and Sparks of wisdom

There are three fundamental questions that should shape the way a Torah Jew thinks about money.

First: What is the purpose of money from a Torah perspective? What are we supposed to do with what we have?

Second: To whom does our money actually belong?

And third, which follows naturally from the first two: What should an economically just Torah society look like?

These questions become particularly important in affluent Orthodox communities. In the aggregate, such communities may be wealthy, but wealth is certainly not evenly distributed. There are people of extraordinary means living alongside families struggling every month simply to maintain what has become the normal communal standard of living.

Poverty is also relative. A family may technically earn considerably more than the average American household and nevertheless experience genuine financial pressure because of tuition, housing, kosher food, Shabbos and Yom Tov, simchos, and the other unavoidable expenses of Orthodox communal life.

The question, therefore, is not simply how wealthy our community is. The deeper question is: What does the Torah expect us to do with that wealth?

The Purpose of Money

From a Torah perspective, the purpose of money is really no different from the purpose of anything else a person possesses.

Everything a person has is ultimately supposed to be used in the service of Hashem.

We sometimes think that our obligations to Hashem end wherever explicit halachah ends. Something is either required, prohibited, or permitted. But something being technically permitted does not mean that its use is spiritually neutral.

Money creates choices. And those choices themselves become part of עבודת ה׳ — the service of Hashem.

The question therefore cannot merely be:

“Am I allowed to spend my money this way?”

A Torah Jew must eventually ask a deeper question:

“What purpose does Hashem expect this money to serve?”

Whose Money Is It?

This brings us to the second and perhaps more fundamental question: Whose money is it?

Legally, a person who earns money honestly owns it. Halachah recognizes private property, contracts, inheritance, commerce, damages, theft, and countless other laws that depend upon genuine ownership.

But hashkafically, there is another layer.

The Torah says concerning the Land of Israel:

כִּי לִי הָאָרֶץ — “For the land is Mine.”
(Vayikra 25:23)

A person can possess property while simultaneously recognizing that ultimate ownership belongs to Hashem.

Dovid HaMelech expresses this extraordinarily clearly when the Jewish people contribute enormous wealth toward the future Beis HaMikdash:

כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַנּוּ לָךְ

“For everything is from You, and from Your hand we have given to You.”
(Divrei HaYamim I 29:14)

That sentence contains an entire Torah philosophy of wealth.

We give to Hashem what Hashem first gave to us.

The wealthy person is therefore not merely an owner. He is also, in a profound sense, a trustee.

If someone placed $1 million into your hands as trustee and instructed you that a certain portion was to be distributed to particular beneficiaries, you would never imagine that distributing that money represented extraordinary generosity on your part. You would simply be carrying out the responsibility attached to the money entrusted to you.

That is one way a Torah Jew should understand tzedakah.

When a person has the ability, the classical higher standard of giving is a חומש — one-fifth, not merely מעשר — one-tenth. The underlying idea is powerful: Hashem gave a person resources together with responsibilities concerning those resources.

The question changes from:

“How much of my money must I give away?”

to:

“How does Hashem expect me to administer the money He placed in my hands?”

What Does an Economically Just Torah Society Look Like?

This leads directly to the third question.

The Torah clearly recognizes differences in wealth. It does not demand that everyone possess exactly the same amount. It recognizes rich and poor, employers and workers, lenders and borrowers, landowners and laborers.

Yet the Torah simultaneously constructed an economic system containing powerful mechanisms designed to prevent poverty and wealth from becoming permanently entrenched.

שמיטה — Shemitah, debt cancellation, יובל — Yovel, the return of ancestral land, agricultural gifts to the poor, tzedakah, interest restrictions between Jews, and numerous other mitzvos created a society in which private ownership existed but was never absolute.

The Torah does not abolish wealth.

But neither does it allow wealth to become detached from responsibility.

Exactly how the economic structure of an ancient agricultural society translates into a modern capital-based economy is complicated. There is no simplistic formula. But we cannot therefore ignore the Torah’s underlying message.

It would be deeply disturbing to construct a Torah society economically while simply importing the assumptions of contemporary secular society.

We live within Western culture, and affluent Orthodox communities naturally absorb many of its assumptions. One of those assumptions is that if I earned something legally, it belongs to me absolutely, and therefore what I do with it is fundamentally nobody else’s concern.

That may describe one conception of private property.

It does not adequately describe the Torah conception.

The Forgotten Concept of Kedushah

This leads to one of the greatest challenges created by affluence: materialism.

The Torah’s answer to materialism begins with a concept that is often discussed far too narrowly:

קדושה — kedushah.

The Torah commands:

קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ — “You shall be holy.”
(Vayikra 19:2)

The Ramban famously explains that Torah life cannot be reduced to a technical list of prohibitions. A person could theoretically remain within the technical boundaries of many laws while nevertheless constructing an existence dominated by physical appetite and indulgence.

The Torah demands something more.

Kedushah requires restraint.

Not necessarily asceticism. Judaism does not demand that ordinary people abandon society, reject physical pleasure, or live as monks.

But neither does Judaism teach that every permitted pleasure should therefore be pursued to its maximum.

The human being possesses both physical drives and a spiritual capacity. Kedushah means that the physical serves the spiritual rather than the spiritual becoming the servant of the physical.

That principle applies to food, houses, clothing, automobiles, vacations, celebrations—and money itself.

Tzniyus Is Also an Economic Value

There is another Torah concept that has become unnecessarily narrow in popular discussion:

צניעות — tzniyus.

Tzniyus is frequently discussed almost exclusively in connection with women’s clothing. That is certainly one application, but it is only one small part of a much broader Torah personality.

Tzniyus applies to men and women.

It applies to dress, speech and behavior—but it also applies to wealth.

There is a difference between enjoying something and needing everyone else to know that you enjoyed it.

A person may decide to take an expensive vacation. But another question remains:

Why must everybody see it?

There is a difference between consumption and conspicuous consumption.

The house, automobile, vacation, watch, clothing, simcha and restaurant can become instruments not simply of enjoyment but of signaling:

This is what I have. This is where I belong. This is my status.

That phenomenon does not remain private.

Your Spending Changes Your Neighbor’s Standard

This is where individual consumption becomes a communal matter.

When one wealthy family raises the standard of what constitutes a “normal” bar mitzvah, wedding, vacation, house, car or wardrobe, that family may easily be able to afford it.

But the new standard does not remain inside that family’s bank account.

Other families see it.

Children see it.

Teenagers see it.

Shidduch-age young adults see it.

Eventually yesterday’s luxury becomes today’s expectation.

A family struggling financially may know perfectly well that it cannot afford that standard, yet still feel compelled to approximate it because its children live within the same social environment.

This is why even a person who can afford extravagance should consider what his behavior does to those who cannot.

The question is not merely:

“Can I afford this?”

It is also:

“What happens to my community when people like me normalize this?”

The modern bar mitzvah is an obvious example. In many communities, bar mitzvah celebrations have reached a scale that would once have been associated with weddings.

Why?

Very often there is no meaningful answer except that this has become what people do.

And once enough people do it, everybody else feels the pressure.

Restraint Requires a Community

Kedushah is particularly difficult because Judaism does not advocate escaping society.

We are supposed to build a קהילה קדושה — a holy community.

It is much easier for an individual to practice restraint when everyone around him practices restraint. It becomes enormously harder when the surrounding culture constantly advertises consumption.

That means communal culture matters.

Every family contributes to establishing the definition of “normal.”

Choosing a modest car when one could afford a luxury car, making a dignified but restrained simcha, living in a comfortable rather than ostentatious house, or simply choosing not to publicize every luxury one enjoys may appear to be private decisions.

They are not entirely private.

Collectively, such decisions create a culture.

And the opposite decisions create a culture as well.

The Tuition Crisis Is Different

Materialism can ultimately be addressed by individuals. A person can buy a smaller house. A person can drive a used automobile. A person can take fewer vacations. A person can make a simpler simcha.

Tuition is different.

A Torah education is not a luxury that Orthodox parents can simply decide to eliminate from their budget.

And historically, educating Jewish children was never understood exclusively as the private financial responsibility of whichever parents happened to have children in school that particular year.

Education is a communal obligation.

When a community does not fulfill that responsibility, parents obviously still must do everything possible to educate their children. But that does not transform an underlying communal responsibility into an exclusively parental one.

Yet much of contemporary Orthodox society has adopted essentially the American private-school model.

The school calculates the cost of educating a child and sends the parents a bill.

That model makes sense for an elite private school where attendance is discretionary and families choosing the institution generally possess the means to pay.

It is a deeply problematic model for a religious community in which virtually every family is religiously obligated to educate its children within a Torah framework.

The Public-School Model Contains an Important Lesson

Ironically, the American public-school funding structure contains something much closer to the traditional communal concept.

A homeowner pays school taxes before having children.

He pays while his children attend school.

He continues paying after his children graduate.

Why?

Because society has determined that educating the next generation is not merely the responsibility of today’s parents.

It is a responsibility of the community.

Historically, Jewish communities understood this principle as well. Communities possessed mechanisms for raising communal funds and supporting essential communal institutions.

A Torah community should therefore seriously consider a broad-based model in which supporting Torah education becomes an ordinary obligation of communal membership rather than a massive bill imposed primarily upon parents during the twenty years when they happen to be raising children.

The precise mechanism is a practical question.

The principle comes first.

What Tuition Does to Our Children

The consequences of the present system extend far beyond bank accounts.

Consider a family with four children paying substantial yeshiva tuition.

The parents do not merely need to earn the amount appearing on the tuition statement. They need to earn enough pre-tax income to have that amount remaining after taxes, while simultaneously paying for housing, food, insurance, transportation, Yom Tov, healthcare and every other expense of family life.

This can require an extraordinary amount of additional annual income.

And that economic reality eventually determines what our children believe they are permitted to become.

A young person may love teaching.

Another might want to become a professor.

Another might choose research.

Another might want to enter some useful but moderately compensated profession.

But eventually the calculation appears:

How am I going to pay tuition for four children?

The community has unintentionally created an economic system that narrows the range of viable professions available to its own children.

That is not merely a financial problem.

It changes the character of the community itself.

Money as a Trust

Ultimately, all three questions return to one principle.

What is money for?

עבודת ה׳ — serving Hashem.

Whose money is it?

Legally it belongs to the individual, but ultimately:

כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל — “Everything is from You.”

And what should an economically just Torah society look like?

Not necessarily a society in which everybody possesses the same amount, but a society in which wealth never loses its connection to responsibility.

A wealthy person does not need to apologize for being wealthy. Wealth can accomplish extraordinary things.

But Torah wealth carries obligations.

It demands צדקה — tzedakah, קדושה — restraint and holiness, and צניעות — modesty rather than display.

It requires us to consider not merely whether we can afford something, but what our choices communicate and what standards they create for everyone around us.

And above all, it requires remembering that money is not simply something we accumulated.

It is something entrusted to us.

Dovid HaMelech expressed the entire philosophy in a few words:

כִּי מִמְּךָ הַכֹּל וּמִיָּדְךָ נָתַנּוּ לָךְ

“For everything is from You, and from Your hand we have given to You.”

Once money is understood that way, the question is no longer simply how much am I entitled to keep?

The deeper question becomes:

What does Hashem expect me to accomplish with what He has placed in my hands?