Business ethics and sexual ethics in halakhah

Overview

Recall questions on verbal and monetary deception, weights and measures, lending at interest and heter iska, the poor borrower, business law today, sex as a mitzvah and pleasure within marriage, niddah and the mikveh, prohibited relations, same-sex relationships, and whether halakhah is still relevant.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is verbal deception or verbal wronging in Jewish law?

   Model answer

   The rabbis read the prohibition on wronging as covering words as well as money, and they treated the verbal form as the more serious, since money can be returned and humiliation cannot. It covers asking the price of goods with no intention of buying, sending someone to a seller who has nothing to sell, giving advice that serves the adviser rather than the person asking, reminding a penitent of their former conduct or a convert of their origins, and telling a sufferer that their misfortune is deserved, which is precisely the failing of Job's friends. A closely related prohibition forbids stealing another person's mind, that is, creating a false impression even where nobody loses money, which covers misleading impressions of generosity, hospitality or quality.

2. 2

   In what sense is sex a mitzvah in Jewish teaching?

   Model answer

   In two distinct senses. There is a positive obligation of procreation, derived from the command to be fruitful and multiply, which the Mishnah treats as fulfilled by having children of both sexes according to one school and two sons according to the other, and which halakhah places on the man. Separately and independently there is the husband's obligation of conjugal rights, derived from a passage on the treatment of wives, which is understood as the wife's entitlement rather than the husband's, with the Mishnah setting expected frequency according to the husband's occupation and travel. Because these are two different obligations, marital sex remains a duty where procreation is impossible, and the tradition therefore does not tie the legitimacy of sex to the possibility of conception in the way some other religious traditions have.

3. 3

   What does Jewish law say about lending at interest?

   Model answer

   The Torah forbids charging interest on a loan to a fellow Israelite in three separate passages, treating it as an exploitation of someone in need rather than as a commercial transaction, while permitting it on a loan to a foreigner. The rabbis extended the prohibition considerably, applying it to the borrower and to the witnesses and scribe as well as the lender, and creating a secondary category, sometimes called the dust of interest, that catches indirect benefits such as gifts, favours or even greeting the lender in a way one would not otherwise have done. The underlying principle is that lending to the poor is an act of charity, not a business.

4. 4

   What is heter iska, and why was it developed?

   Model answer

   It is a legal instrument that restructures what would otherwise be an interest-bearing loan as a joint business venture, in which the lender supplies capital as an investor and the recipient manages it, so that the return is a share of profit rather than interest. Conditions of proof are written in such a way that the arrangement functions in practice much like a loan. It was developed because the flat prohibition of interest was workable in an agrarian society of neighbourly loans but impossible in a commercial economy where credit is the basis of enterprise. Documents of this kind are standard in Israeli banking and among observant businesses. Critics inside the tradition regard it as a legal fiction that empties the prohibition; defenders argue that the prohibition was aimed at exploiting the needy, not at investment, and that the device keeps that distinction alive.

5. 5

   What provisions does Jewish law make for the poor borrower?

   Model answer

   Free-loan societies, which lend without interest and are treated as a high form of charity because they preserve the recipient's dignity and independence, have existed in Jewish communities for centuries and still operate. The Torah requires that a pledge taken as security be returned when the debtor needs it, and forbids taking the tools of someone's trade. Debts are released in the seventh year, which protected the poor but made lenders reluctant as the year approached; Hillel is credited with devising a procedure by which a loan is assigned to the court so that it survives the release, on the reasoning that a rule intended to help the poor was in practice choking off their credit. That episode is often cited as the classic example of rabbinic law adjusting itself to its own purpose.

6. 6

   How did the prohibition on interest interact with the position of Jews in medieval Christian Europe?

   Model answer

   Christian authorities also prohibited usury among Christians, while Jews were excluded from land ownership, guilds and most professions across much of Europe. The permission to lend at interest to those outside the community, combined with rulers' need for credit, pushed some Jews into moneylending, which was legally useful to the authorities and socially despised. The result was a population dependent on the protection of rulers who could expel or expropriate them at will, and a lasting stereotype which anti-Semitic propaganda has drawn on ever since. Jews therefore often point out that the occupation was imposed by exclusion rather than chosen, and that Jewish law itself treats lending at interest to the needy as wrongdoing.

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