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VALUES, PROSPERITY, AND THE TALMUD ß

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE ANCIENT RABBIS

Larry Kahaner

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page vi 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page i

VALUES, PROSPERITY, AND THE TALMUD 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page ii

OTHER BOOKS BY LARRY KAHANER

Nonfiction The Quotations of Chairman Greenspan Competitive Intelligence Say It and Live It (coauthor) Cults That Kill On the Line The Phone Book (coauthor)

Fiction Naked Prey (pseudonym Larry Kane) 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page iii

VALUES, PROSPERITY, AND THE TALMUD ß

BUSINESS LESSONS FROM THE ANCIENT RABBIS

Larry Kahaner

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page iv

Copyright © 2003 by Larry Kahaner. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Pub- lisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, e-mail: [email protected].

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This book is dedicated to the memories of my father, Max, and my father-in-law, Bob. I learned from both of their styles. 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page vi 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page vii

The first question a person is asked at Judgment after death is “did you deal in good faith in your business?” —RABA, IN THE TALMUD

One who wishes to acquire wisdom should study the way money works, for there is no greater area of Torah study than this. It is like an overflowing stream. —RABBI ISHMAEL, IN THE TALMUD

If the statistics are right, the constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. . . . All things are mortal but the Jew; all other nations pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?” —MARK TWAIN, AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE JEWS 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page viii 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page ix

CONTENTS

Preface xi Acknowledgments xxiii

LESSON ONE The Spirituality of Money 1 LESSON TWO Work as a Holy Act 23 LESSON THREE Treating Workers Well Pays Dividends 43 LESSON FOUR Giving and Getting a Fair Day’s Work 73 LESSON FIVE The Bonding of Corporate Profits and Ethics 89 LESSON SIX Balancing the Environment and Profits 123 LESSON SEVEN The Rules of Partnerships, Deals, and Debt 143 LESSON EIGHT Competition Is for True Competitors Only 169 LESSON NINE Education Is a Lifelong Process 183 LESSON TEN Charity Means More Than Just Giving 203 The Ultimate Business Secret of the Rabbis: Reputation 217

A Note on Translation and Commentators 233 A Short History of the Talmud 235 Unlocking the Talmud’s Structure 241 A Who’s Who of Talmudic Rabbis 243 Bibliography 251 Index 257 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page x 10471_Kahaner_3p_fm_r1.k.qxd 6/16/03 10:15 AM Page xi

PREFACE

What Can I Learn about Business from a 1,500-Year-Old Book?

During the height of their $10 billion empire in the mid-1980s, the ’s Olympia & York Development, Ltd., was the largest real estate company in North America. This Jewish orthodox family, immigrants to Canada from , had built a reputation based on integrity, honesty, and on-time delivery of projects, while adhering to their core values of charity and generosity. When competitors discovered that Paul Reichmann and his broth- ers studied the Talmud daily, they also began reading it to see if they could glean some of the family’s business secrets from this esoteric document. To their dismay, there were no hidden secrets. The Reich- mann’s business acumen stemmed from the Talmud’s practical advice, moral guidance, and ethical values—teachings that the family pre- cisely followed. The Talmud is one of the cornerstones of and Jewish cul- ture, but it is not a religious work. The Babylonian Talmud (there is a shorter and somewhat different Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud)

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PREFACE

1 contains about 2 ⁄2 million words and is composed of discussions and debate among ancient rabbis (rabbi means “teacher”) that cover virtually every aspect of life, from medicine to child rearing and from business to building a house. Many people consider these volumes a manual for life. Around the time of the Second Temple in , from 539 to 332 B.C.E. (before the common era) members of the Great Assembly, a group of priests and prominent citizens, began collecting and organiz- ing all the written texts. They decided on their order as well as what works would be included in the Five Books of Moses, or Torah. The Torah, usually seen in the form of parchment scrolls, contains early biblical stories with which most of us are familiar. These scholars also organized another body of text called the Prophets and writings such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Chronicles. These works together constitute the Old Testament, which is part of Hebrew or Jewish Scripture. Jewish Scripture is the foundation of the Old Testament in the Christian Bible and other religious works that followed. Once completed, these scholars turned their attention to organiz- ing the centuries-old oral works, a hodgepodge of laws, opinions, and stories that had grown unwieldy over the years. These mainly were the Mishnah, oral commentaries on the Torah, and the Gemara, which is commentary on the Mishnah. (The word Gemara is sometimes used to mean the Babylonian Talmud and consists of the Mishnah plus com- mentary on the Mishnah.) When these oral commentaries were finally organized and written down, they formed the Talmud. (For more detail on the formation of the Talmud see “A Short History of the Talmud” in the back of this book.) The charts that follow show how these ancient works fit together. Although the Talmud is fixed in time, contemporary rabbis still answer questions based on discussions and arguments of the ancient Talmudic rabbis. (For more about these rabbis, check “A Who’s Who of Talmudic Rabbis” in the back of this book.) The Talmud was designed to stimulate conversation and debate through free association and spirited arguments among sages, each

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The Jewish or Hebrew Scripture is composed of:

The Five Books of Moses (The Old Testament)

Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy +

Prophets

Joshua Judges Samuel Kings Isaiah Jeremiah Ezekiel The 12 Prophets +

Writings

Psalms ProverbsJob The 5 Daniel Ezra Chronicles Megillot and Nehemiah

Songs of Songs Ruth Lamentations Ecclesiastes Esther

*Note: Some scholars use the term Torah to refer to the five books of Moses; some use it to refer to the entire Jewish Scripture.

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