Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Making Money at Any Cost

Our community idolizes people with money. Their names are on our buildings, they get the most Aliyas at Shule, they are feted at large communal banquets. Our kids are watching. They see that Rabbis, social workers, and teachers struggle to get by while Wall Street traders have their names in bright lights.

It took Gavi and Rivkah Holtzberg being murdered by terrorists in Mumbai for Chabad emissaries to finally get the recognition they deserve as heroes of the Jewish people. The same is true of Israeli soldiers, who seem to come back into the American Jewish consciousness only when Israel is at war with Hamas in Gaza. The rest of the time we go back to what truly matters, that our kids get into Harvard..

If we have learned one thing from the Madoff scandal it’s that the Jewish community is in need of new heroes. No longer can we look up only to those who are billionaires, even if they are significant philanthropists. If we continue to highlight mostly money men as Jewish role models, then we will create the conditions for more Jews to cut corners to make a buck at any cost so that they receive the recognition of their peers. Our community must stand first and foremost for Godly values. Everything else is secondary.

From the age of sixteen I wanted to be a Rabbi and shortly after my 22nd birthday I had the honor of becoming the Rebbe’s emissary at Oxford University. My wife and I worked our guts out to build Jewish life at the University, which meant spending about half my time fundraising, about the norm for the average Chabad emissary. After a few years, my students graduated and went on to lucrative careers. They had none of the money problems I did. Some of them may have worked a quarter as hard but got paid ten times as much, especially if they went to work on Wall Street. It didn’t seem fair. As Chabad emissaries, where was our security?  I watched many of my Rabbinic colleagues borrowing money just to make weddings for their children, and this after a lifetime of hard work. Where was the justice?

But what sustained me in communal work was the fact that in Chabad the role models at the top of the communal ladder are not the money men but the Shluchim. To be an emissary of the Rebbe is seen as life’s highest honor (although even in Chabad these days the money men are beginning to assume a level of preeminence that they did not occupy before).

We see the same model in the Jewish settler movement in Israel. The heroes are those who sacrifice by living in dangerous areas where they face incessant terror attack. Yes, settler Yeshiva and institutions are assisted by millionaire philanthropists, but it is still the settlers themselves who are the role-models of the movement. This is why both Chabad and the settler groups continue to draw strong pools of talent rather than losing their most gifted souls to technology startups or making yeridah to make more money in America. It all comes down to whom you hold up as heroes.

Look, I’m not naïve. I understand that money makes the world go round. Without cash, the Shules can’t open, the schools would close, and the Jews would be returned to the impoverished life they had for centuries.

But there has to be a balance.  Surely we can elevate those who work for the communal good amid little financial reward to positions of glory in our community so our children get the message that righteousness rather than wealth is what Jews most respect. Can anyone reading this article name five famous contemporary Jewish thinkers? Can you name any lawyers celebrated for defending Israel other than Alan Dershowitz?  Can you name ten famous Jewish educators?

When the Lubavitcher Rebbe died, I wrote an article about his life on the plane back from his funeral.  I called it ‘The Colossus and Me’ and began the article by mentioning that what I first noticed about the Rebbe were the holes in his shoes. Here was a man utterly divorced from materialism, even though he was one of the most influential Jews of the 20th century. The same would be said of people like the Dalai Lama. Wouldn’t you be surprised if you heard that the robe he was wearing was Dolce and Gabbana? The fact is that saintly individuals don’t care much for things. Those who do are possessed of an inner emptiness. And they will stuff every Rolex watch and Chanel suit into the black hole of their existence in the hope of filling up the gaping chasm in their lives. But since these things are, ultimately, valueless, it can only create a shopaholic addiction that is neither satisfying nor fulfilling.

What I am saying is that our community’s obsession with material wealth bespeaks a spiritual crisis that can only be resolved by returning to our core spiritual commitments of family, community, and tradition. We need to attend more classes and fewer shopping malls. We need to tell our kids that it’s more important to us that they act righteously than succeed professionally. And we need to recommit to our families, putting the bedroom before the boardroom and the family dining table before the office desk.

After the holocaust, the Jewish community concluded that money would be the best guarantor of Jewish continuity and security. If Jews were wealthy we could lobby for Israel and build vital communal institutions that would lead to a rebirth. This notion was only partially correct because without emphasizing to our children that the Jewish people stood for tradition, ethics, and a holy way of life we stood the risk of being corrupted by wealth and seeing money as an end rather than a means. Once you remove morality from the picture, everything is lost. Once we produce billionaires without values, there is no telling where their voraciousness will stop. And you can wake up one morning and discover that all that you lived for – membership in the most expensive country clubs, access to the most exclusive investment vehicles – has vanished and was nothing but hot air. Both figuratively and literally.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is the founder of This World: The Jewish Values Network. In January he will publish his new book ‘The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets to Rediscovering Desire and Reigniting Passion for Life” (HarperOne). http://www.shmuley.com