Shabbat Mishpatim
Written by Richard Jacobi Thursday, 31 January 2008
The phrase ‘credit crunch’ is not one that, I would guess, any of us were familiar with until a few months ago. Now, it’s one that we hear almost every day. It has its own web-site and it features in many of the news stories, especially this week when the story of Jerome Kerviel’s £3.7 billion pound bets emerged.
As I’m sure you know, a credit crunch is caused when banks won’t or can’t lend money. In this case, the reason is that the complex ways of passing on lending has backfired, which is why the FBI are now investigating at least fourteen American financial institutions. ‘Sub-prime lending’ is another phrase with which we’re becoming all too familiar. In this country, the most famous effect of the credit crunch has been Northern Rock, but it is hitting the whole financial sector. This means it’s starting to affect all of us, whether you have savings in Northern Rock, as I do, or not.
So, what’s this got to do with parshat Mishpatim and the people of Israel gathered at Sinai to hear the detailed rules of the covenant they’re entering into? This week’s portion is appropriately entitled Mishpatim, meaning judgements, and the parasha is full of them. All sorts of rules can be found here. There are rules about keeping slaves, about various types of injury (including the infamous and often mis-interpreted ‘an eye for an eye’ in Exod. 21:24), about the ox that gores, and rules concerning damages, about property – including daughters by the way – about sorcery, pederasty, idolatry, treatment of strangers, widows and orphans, about lending money and returning clothes when left as pledges, about the Shabbat and Pilgrim festivals, and so on.
In amongst all these rules, in Exodus chapter 22, verses 20 to 26, we read an ethical section about treatment of the weak and poor. It includes some of the earliest financial regulation:
(24) If you lend money to My people, to the poor among you, do not act toward them as a creditor; exact no interest from them. (25) If you take your neighbour’s garment in pledge, you must return it to him before the sun sets; (26) it is his only clothing, the sole covering for his skin. In what else shall he sleep? Therefore, if he cries out to Me, I will pay heed, for I am compassionate.
Now, there are problems caused by these rules only applying within the Jewish community. In later eras the rabbis sought to suggest that a truly pious Jew would apply such sound lending principles to any borrower, Jew or non-Jew.
However, the key point I want to make is this. Throughout the Torah, where loans are mentioned, it is always the primary responsibility of the lender to ensure that such loans are reasonable. However, the Mishnah goes further when discussing this issue in Baba Metzia 5:11:
These (people) transgress the negative commandment (regarding usury): the lender, the borrower, the surety, and the witnesses. The Sages say: the scribe also.
In all, these people transgress five negative commandments. Four, including our verse from Exodus are explicitly about usury; the fifth is Leviticus 19:14 – “You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind”.
If we update the Mishnaic text to the present, the list would be far more complex, including financial advisors, solicitors, accountants, agents, intermediaries, regulators, governments, international institutions, and so on. Remember, too, that this applies to loans to developing countries as well as to individuals around the world. But, even though the list might be longer, surely the essential principles are the same: offering loans and credit, including mortgages, to those who cannot afford them is the worst form of usury and deception. Offering inducements such as low-starting payments, interest-free periods, etc. serve to tempt and seduce borrowers. The Midrash, Exodus Rabbah (31:6) elaborates on the Mishnah by suggesting that the borrower of such a loan is like “one bitten by a serpent who does not feel its bite until a swelling sets in”. Such financial systems are immoral and, to use Biblical language, sinful.
Now, we cannot overturn or reform the global financial systems in a morning, more’s the pity. But we are Progressive Jews, integrated into the wider society that is influenced by these financial systems. We can engage with the world by keeping our Jewish values in our minds and in our hearts, by remembering all the relevant rules contained in this parasha and elsewhere. This, perhaps, is what Abarbanel meant when he interpreted another famous phrase in parshat Mishpatim: na-aseh ve-nishma (Ex. 24:7). He said its meaning was “we will do (na-aseh) all that we already know, and we want to hear (ve-nishma) and learn more.”
And, as we learn more, our Judaism also requires that we translate learning into doing. We can fight for fairer financial systems as they affect individuals and developing countries. At a global level, we can support, for example, the Jubilee Debt Campaign. At an individual level we could do worse than remember this axiom, from Shimon Ben Zoma:
Who is rich? Those who rejoice in their lot, as it says: ‘When you eat what you have worked for, you will be happy, and it will be well with you.’ (Avot 4:1, citing Ps. 128:2)
May you be, on this basis, rich and happy, and may it be well with you.
