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Guiding Principles of Jewish Business Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2015

Ronald M. Green
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Abstract:

This discussion develops six of the most important guiding principles of classical Jewish business ethics and illustrates their application to a complex recent case of product liability. These principles are: (1) the legitimacy of business activity and profit; (2) the divine origin and ordination of wealth (and hence the limits and obligations of human ownership); (3) the preeminent position in decision making given to the protection and preservation (sanctity) of human life; (4) the protection of consumers from commercial harm; (5) the avoidance of fraud and misrepresentation in sales transactions; and (6) the moral requirement to go beyond the letter of the law. Although these Talmudic principles are clearly obligatory only for “Torah-obedient” Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, many Jews share a sensibility informed by them. Non-Jews, too, may be instructed by Jewish teachings about business ethics.

Type
Perspectives from Judaism:
Information
Business Ethics Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , March 1997 , pp. 21 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Business Ethics 1997

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References

Notes

1 This case is substantially based on Numan A. Williams and Howard M. Hammer’s discussion of “The Case of the Kentucky School Bus,” in CPCU Journal (December 1988), 196–206. Additional materials have been drawn from articles in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, May 16, 17, 18 May and 5 and 9 July 1988.

2 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Kamma 85a.

3 Roger Brooks, Support for the Poor in the Mishnaic Law of Agriculture: Tractate Peah (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1983), p. 18.

4 “Some Aspects of the Jewish Attitude toward the Welfare State,” Tradition 5:1 (Spring 1963), 146.

5 In the first century before the common era, Rabbi Hillel’s Prosbul ordinance permitted circumvention of the Ribbit interdict when the borrower had freely agreed and consented to the transaction. For a discussion of later Talmudic and rabbinic rulings in this area, see Aaron Levine’s Free Enterprise and Jewish Law (New York: KTAV, 1980), pp. 162–172 and his Economics and Jewish Law: Halakhic Perspectives (New York: KTAV, 1987), Ch. 7.

6 For a discussion of rabbinic teachings with regard to just price and the limitation of competition, see Meir Tamari, With All Your Possessions: Jewish Ethics and Economic Life (New York: The Free Press, 1987), Ch. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 182. (delete “p. 182”?)

8 Midrash-Rabbah, Kohelet, 713.

9 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 105b.

10 Babylonian Talmud, Tractates Shabbath 150a; Yoma 84b.

11 Choshen Mishpat, Holkhot Shmirat Hanefesh, Section 425.

12 Levine, Economics and Jewish Law, p. 94.

13 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Metzia 49b.

14 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Metzia 49b.

15 Levine, Economics and Jewish Law, pp. 8–9, 68; Tamari, With All Your Possessions, p. 47.

16 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Avodah Zarah 15b.

17 The evolving debate on this topic is apparent in the articles by Rabbi J. David Bleich, Tradition 14:4 (Summer 1977), 121–123 and Tradition 17:3 (Summer 1978), 140–142; and Fred Rosner, “Cigarette Smoking and Jewish Law,” Journal of Halachah and Contemporary Society 4 (Fall 1982), 33–45.

18 Leo Jung, Business Ethics in Jewish Law (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1987), pp. 93–94.

19 Shulchan Arukh, Choshen Mishpat, Hilkhot G’neivah, section 358.

20 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Baba Kamma 99b.

21 Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 57a.