Sukkat Shalom Reform Synagogue

As I write this the sky is overcast, a cold windy rain is falling, and the sky is darkening towards dusk.

Perhaps this is why my thoughts turn to the financial situation facing the world as a whole and many of us as individuals. As a Rabbi I make no pretence to having a deep and intricate knowledge of economics and will refrain from suggesting specific measures that are needed to correct the finances of the world but I would suggest that our tradition provides moral guidance that we would be wise to consider.

Genesis Rabbah (14:1) tells us “The king by justice establishes the land, but a man of gifts (terumoth) overthrows it (Prov. XXIX, 4). ‘The king‘ refers to the supreme King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He; ‘By justice establishes the land’ means that He created the world on the basis of justice, as it is written, In the beginning Elohim (E.V. ‘God’) created (Gen. I, 1)1; ‘But the man of gifts overthrows it’ What does this imply? First that there is a direct relationship between what is justice and what is practicable. If we act in a just manner we will benefit, if not we will suffer. Is such a claim supportable and if so how does this relate to our current problems?

Judaism has long maintained that we do not own the world. Rather that we have a charge from the true Owner to tend and govern it justly. Historically the Earth has been capable supporting the needs of its creatures. (Though given the immense and ever growing human population of the world this may no longer be true.) This is not to deny that there have often been natural disasters such famine, earthquakes and disease. Nor am I claiming that these were just in the sense being caused by the immoral action of people. Yet it is true that society bears more of a responsibility for even these events than is immediately apparent. Let us take the Irish potato famine as an example. No one would claim that people deliberately caused the potato blight, but the conditions that provoked and worsened the famine were the result of the actions of “gifted” people. By the time of the famine the bulk of the Irish people had been impoverished in order to sustain the lavish life styles of wealthy landowners. They had become utterly dependent on the potato for their very lives. Thus they had to plant and farm it ever more intensively. As a result when the blight arrived it spread quickly, pushing those already living in poverty into the grave. Worse, even while people were starving in the streets and in their homes, Ireland remained an exporter of high value crops such as wheat with the profits going to the wealthy. Far too many of the gifted people focus on their own “needs” and used the bulk of the proceeds to maintain their luxuries and extravagances at the expense of the common people.

Our current situation seems unlikely to cause death and despair on anything like the scale seen in 19th century Ireland. Yet I would maintain that there is a moral equivalence. We too live in a society that encourages, indeed seems to demand, ever more elaborate and ostentatious displays of wealth even while the demands for food, warmth and shelter become ever more difficult for more and more people. As the common people in Ireland became utterly dependent on the potato as the mainstay of their lives so our times see credit as basis for our lives and livelihoods. When the so-called sub-prime loans, the brainchild of the greed of “gifted” financial wizards, became a blight the effects spread throughout the world’s financial markets as the potato blight infested fields across Ireland. In the 19th century the “gifted” men were protected and shelter by the establishment, in no small part because they were in and of that establishment. While individuals of these “gifted” people did in fact take meaningful steps to lessen the suffering of the poor these steps were insufficient and took second place to protecting themselves and their positions. The question before us is will we permit a repetition of this final sacrilege? Do we need to pour vast sums into those institutions that created and sustained the causes of this recession? Do we need to shelter the architects of so much despair? It appears that we do. But if this is so we have the right and the duty to demand Teshuvah both of them and of ourselves. They and we must return. We must acknowledge the harm we and they have done. We and they must help those who have been harmed. We and they must help and act justly and compassionately with all of the peoples of the world who live lives of despair and poverty. We and they must bridle our hubris and our greed so that “the world will be set right by the rule of God” “The king by who by justice establishes the land”. The world does not belong to us. Rather we belong to it.