MONEY

Tonight we're talking about a lot of people's favorite subject: money. You're all smiling, 100 percent. Look at that. Except Ezra; he's snoring in the corner. He's kind of rough; he prays about it. We're in the dog days of Atikin, where we start the Amidah (standing prayer) before 6, which means we start praying around 5.

Do whatever you want with money. So Hashem blessed you with money. Well, at least one or two of you. Or some of you. But you got the money. You earned it honestly. You gave your Maaser (20%). And now you got a few million left. Just for this year, of course. And now you want to have a birthday party. So you charter a plane. You find out it's a seven-something-seven, and you can invite up to 300-something people. You decide you're going to fly to somewhere exotic, Tahiti. And you're going to have to fly the caterer, of course, because there's not too much there. There's not a kosher butcher in all of Tahiti, you can trust me. And you're going to have, of course, all the trappings. So maybe your birthday party will cost between two and three million, conservatively.

Can you do that? What do you think? Why not? Not whether you can actually do it; are you allowed to do it? Forget whether it's smart. I'm saying, am I allowed? I'm a Torah Jew. I follow the Torah, I'm Jewish, I made the money legally and honestly, I took care of all my obligations, I don't owe anybody any money, it's my money, I gave my tzedakah (charity), I got money left, and I want to have a birthday party. I gave it to everybody. I got more left. I got a hundred million; I gave away fifty. I just want to make a party. My birthday. I'm ninety. I can't spend what's left. Anybody understand the question?

Interesting question. Well, I guess that would depend on who the money belongs to, who gave it to me, and what they expect me to do with it. Or, or, or. I mean, there must be a lot of ways to look at this question. We're not just going to take a vote here. I vote you can make the party. I vote you can't. Because then I'd ask you how come. And you don't want me to ask you that, right? Because how come is a tough question.

I told this over on Shabbat and I liked it. Since we still have not found a heter (halachic permission) to tape on Shabbat in this place, anyhow—and we're not looking for one—I wanted to read you something about the three holy days of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. We're supposed to go three times a year, three times a year, to be seen. Yera'eh kol zechurecha (All males shall be seen). I don't mean to be prejudiced, but that's what it says. They should greet Penei Ha'adon, Hashem Elokei Yisrael (the Master, the God of Israel). Did you know he's supposed to do that? It's called Aliyah la-regel (pilgrimage festival ascent). Shalosh Regalim (three holidays).

Well, let me translate, because people in CD land don't understand this stuff. “I will remove the goyim (Gentiles) from before you. I will broaden your borders, and no one—no man—will covet.” My favorite biblical words. Well, covet: lo yachmod (be jealous of, covet). You know, covet, C-O-V-E-T. I thought that's the thing my wife sticks the blanket in. Sounds something like that: duvet, covet, covet, duvet. Okay. Lo yachmod ish et artzecha be'alotecha (No man shall covet your land when you go up). What is Hashem saying here? When you go see the Adon (master), the God of Israel, you don't need a security system, you don't need an alarm system, nobody's going to bother your stuff. It's a miracle. Who's the Adon? Hashem. But throughout the Torah we refer to Hashem, but we don't call Him Adon. It's not a common name. In fact, it is used. It has been used recently—way back in Mishpatim. And it says over there, Shalosh pe'amim bashanah (three times a year). Sounds familiar? Three times a year, all your males shall be seen; they shall greet—there it is again—the Master, Hashem, two times.

The three holidays that we leave our home—we're spoiled by the jet age. If I want to go to Jerusalem, I book a flight. I leave at 7:30 p.m.; 12 hours later, 10 hours later, I'm in Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), or at least Tel Aviv. Ten hours. When they went to Yerushalayim for the holidays, let's say somebody lived near the Golan Heights, or better yet—and I know it's freezing out tonight—somebody lived in a lot. Now the holidays come, so they pack up their donkey, their camel, their horse, whatever they travel on, and they go by foot, carrying their bikurim (their fruits), their family, their children, whatever they're going with, their lamb for Korban Pesach (Passover offering). They walk for a week or two. They get there, they stay there a week, they come back a week or two. They're gone for approximately five weeks, and nothing, Hashem guarantees, happens to their property. It's a miracle.

I mean, around there, there's no car in the driveway. You can be sure there's no stereo on the shelf. And yet Hashem said they didn't live in these high-security homes: farmhouses, huts, and regular Mishnah-style homes, nothing fancy. Some had windows, no glass. In fact, windows didn't have glass, just a way to let light in, not keep the bugs out. So they left, and Hashem guarantees nothing's going to happen.

Why such a miracle? I open up Gemara Pesachim (the Passover tractate) and find out something interesting. Rabbi Ami said anyone who owns land is required to go three times a year to Yerushalayim on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Someone who doesn't own real estate doesn't have to go for the three. Now, whether this is halakha (Jewish law) or not, or just part of the Gemara, what's the point? The point is as follows: the three holy days were a time to bring your tithes, another famous biblical word meaning 10% of your property, your produce. It was time to bring your bikurim, your first fruits. It was time to bring the portion of Maaser that you produced but weren't able to eat at home: Maaser Sheni (second tithe in Jerusalem), in Yerushalayim. And when you open up the Sefer HaChinuch, which sort of explains or tries to explain the rationale, the reason behind most of our mitzvot (commandments), you find out there's one theme to all this stuff: you don't own the land. The land belongs to Hashem, so He'll watch His. It's not yours anyhow. What you have is a gift, or at most a lease. You have a lease on the property.

Now, if someone wants to understand the subject, I've mentioned this many, many times here on Monday nights: you look to the first place it's discussed in the Torah, and you learn a lot about the subject. The test of affluence, I guess—that's tonight's subject—is discussed when Bnei Yisrael leave Egypt. They leave very wealthy. They go through the sea; they have more money. But when they were leaving, there's a very strange command Hashem gives them: “Moshe, go tell the people to borrow all kinds of valuable things from the Egyptians—jewelry, fancy clothing—because we have to go serve Hashem for three days. So go borrow with you, because you've been slaves for 210 years; you don't have much.” Borrow means I'm giving it back. Were they borrowing? No? It says Hashem said, “Borrow.” Each woman had to go to her neighbor and say, “Oh, I heard you have a luxury this and a designer that, and I'd like to borrow it.” And the men were supposed to borrow. What does borrow mean? You're not borrowing; you're leaving, and you have no intentions of coming back. And with all this borrowing, they became very wealthy. Hashem is very honest. Why would He use the word borrow?

Forgetting all the answers to the question—very interesting question. Forgetting all the answers and focusing on what the Ger Rebbe (the Rebbe of Ger) said: they weren't borrowing from the Egyptians. Their gold and silver was being taken from the Egyptians as pay. Permanent. We worked here, you didn't pay us, we're taking it. This is my pay. And there are several places in the Gemara where there's a dispute about whether they should return it or not among goyim and Jews. But the term borrowing was used because they were borrowing from Hashem. Hashem, at the moment of granting us, as a people, our wealth, stressed the term borrow because everything belongs to Him. That's the message. All that we have belongs to Him. We have to remind ourselves of this constantly.

And when a person owns a field and produces fruit and has crops, and sometimes has a really fantastic year, and they're bringing everything into the barns and the storehouses, they start to believe it's their own. Hashem says, you are required now to go to Yerushalayim with the portion that doesn't belong to you and say, “Hashem, I realize it all belongs to You. Thank You for the peace You gave me.” But if someone doesn't have land and doesn't have that experience of feeling ownership, they don't have to go because they don't own. So what we have is being held in trust. A guardianship. So it's Hashem's money, and we're holding it. If you want to be a trustworthy, sterling guardian, you should investigate what the real owner wants you to do with it. Makes sense so far?

I always looked at it this way: money's in my pocket. I can do whatever I want with it. But if I realize it's not my money in my pocket, I'm a trustee for somebody else's money, I have to find out what the terms are of my legal relationship to this stuff. Can I squander it?

Now, the first excuse, or the first defense, that we use for really wasting money is that I give a lot of tzedakah. That gives me a license to do whatever. In Masechet Shekalim—Shekalim is good because that's shekels; it's money—there are two of the greats of all time. One of them was Rav. One of them was Rav Hama. They're walking in a place called Lod—there's no airport there, I can guarantee you. You know where Lod is in Israel? That's where the airport is. The name of the airport was changed to Ben Gurion, but it was called Lod before. They saw a magnificent synagogue, so Rav Hama said to Rav, “How much wealth did our ancestors invest here?” Rav said, “How many lives were sunk into the ground here? Were there not any Torah scholars they could have supported with all the money wasted on these expensive buildings?” The synagogue. Zeh Eli ve'anvehu (make it beautiful). But Rav Hama said it takes a lot of material sacrifice to build something so beautiful. But even expenditures spent building a shul (synagogue), Rav saw as, remember, trustees, a misappropriation of funds. And when he says, “How many people sunk into the ground?” he equated it with murder.

You know what's a problem in our education system? People are good teachers because they can't afford to live. They don't get paid enough. They're the sharpest of the teachers. So rather than sinking into a dead-end teaching job, they go into real estate. Or the most popular is mortgage banking. Or something. How come someone with the sanitation department makes more than a school teacher? How many children don't have a seat in a school because the school doesn't have the money to expand or build? We really want to ask questions. How many people come to our shuls begging for help with medical expenses and just plain living? And I'm talking to a place that gives hundreds of millions of dollars of tzedakah, but we don't fill the needs of our people with all that we give. So now, does that give me a license to spend my money any way I'd like? Misappropriating funds. Raising questions. I didn't give you any answers. So don't throw any stones yet.

How you spend your time is as important as how you spend your money. There's a famous scene: the Jews are leaving Egypt. Everybody's running around doing a mitzvah. This mitzvah everybody would like. You'd like it. If you were there, you would like it. I know you. You'd like it. The mitzvah is to go and borrow this wealth, with the intention to keep it. And in fact, in the three days of darkness, when the Egyptians couldn't move—because the first three days it was just dark, and the second three days they were frozen in position because they couldn't move from the thickness of the dark—the Jews who had light went around taking an inventory. “Your Cartier is in this drawer. Your Brioni is over here. Your Lalique is over there.” I don't even know if I got the right names anymore. “Your Bentley is parked over there.” “Can I borrow it?” “I don't have one.” “Oh, it's over there; I saw it.” “Oh, how embarrassing. I'll give it to you.” What a great mitzvah. Go around collecting stuff without paying. No credit card bill. They went looking for the bones of Yosef, also a mitzvah, because he asked to be taken out of Egypt and buried back home in Canaan, Shechem, which was destroyed by our lovely, wonderful Palestinian murderers. So what's he doing? Well, there's two mitzvot to do. I can ask for money; I'm doing what Hashem said. I can borrow diamonds; I'm doing what Hashem said. Or I can carry bones, which is what Hashem said.

Oh, Yosef, stam (just): Chacham lev yikach mitzvot (The wise of heart will take mitzvot). Shlomo HaMelech (King Solomon), who no more than most of us is considered in the annals as one of the wisest of all men, if not thee, said, “Chacham lev yikach mitzvot.” The wise of heart will take mitzvot. Zeh Moshe Rabbeinu (This is Moshe our teacher). The Midrash tells us, talking about Moshe, that he chose the mitzvah over the diamonds.

Ladies, I ask you, is he smart? Diamonds. You like red—rubies. Green isn't in color. You like emeralds. No? Platinum? Bones? The difference is that the mitzvah Moshe did is eternal and still lasting today, 3,300 years later. The diamonds they borrowed, nobody knows where they are. Moshe's wisdom was that he didn't lose sight of the long-term goal in the face of the short-term gain.

Rabbeinu Bachya tells us, when he talks about the Shulchan (table) in the Mishkan, that in France—really, don't go shopping there. They're really terrible people. They don't like you. Not because you're American. There are ten times as many Muslims as there are Jews in France. Just to let you know. My latest count: six million to six hundred thousand.

In the old days in France, the wealthy Jews used to put a proviso in their will that their coffin should be made out of their dining room table. Strange. That's true. I could show it to you in print. A coffin made out of ... what's the imagery? My dining room table, where I served the poor, where I had guests, where I said the Torah, where I said Berachot (blessings)—my dining room table, that's all I can take with me. Not the rest of my mansion. My mitzvot.

You have to understand something here. Money is great. It really is. It makes a lot of problems go away. It builds a lot of relationships. It makes things comfortable. And it solves a lot of the things we have to put up with every day, doesn't it? I mean, there are times we have a little money in our pockets, and there are times we're broke. Sometimes we have money in our pockets; it feels better. There's less tension between husband and wife. There's more generosity. There are a couple of options besides the basic necessities, but it's not eternal, it's not forever.

So let's go back to a question I asked about 15 minutes ago. If I'm a trustee, a guardian of the funds of some philanthropist, and it was given to me to distribute, what should I do with that money? In other words, what does Hashem want me to do with His money? You want to make the question bigger? Money makes the world go round. All those pictures of the world go around. The batteries of money. What does Hashem want me to do with my life?

I'll tell you what He doesn't want you to do. Don't go running after what your eye sees—which right now for me is about nothing. You don't chase after the jealousy, after the needs produced by the imagery, by the illusion created by the eyes as to what's beautiful and what's good and what I should have; then you may have a clear enough head to perform mitzvot. Or, conversely, if I seek to fulfill all of my material desires, I forget Hashem's mitzvot. Don't be fooled. It's mi'ut min ha-mi'ut (the minimum of the minimum of the minimum). Who can do both? Chase the buck. The affluence will probably affect your perspective.

So now, my good friends, we peons who don't really have that much—we've been going to classes to try and find out how to get it, but they never tell us. It's not so bad. It's called the simple life. But simple is life. Do you know it's 20 million, might be a little more? I think it's 20 million. For 20 million dollars, you can buy a space flight that would have cost that guy. You go up, you go around, you come down. What's 20 million? You can almost make a Syrian wedding, of course I'm including everything.

The more elaborate our lives get, the more we need brands, labels, designer luxury, the right things, the less room we have in our brains for spirituality. Listen, they are opposites. And we live in a society that helps us lose perspective. If not, it forces us to lose perspective.

You know, the human being is great. Basically, we're animals. I'm not talking about the men, ladies. Basically, we're all animals. We have desires. We have needs. We like comfort and pleasure and rest and relaxation. And our desires—we're like little children. You know, a baby is born very selfish. Hungry? It cries. Wet? It cries. That? Cry. “Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme.” That's what a baby's crying is interpreted as: “Me, me, me, me. The center of everything. Fulfill my desire.” That's an infant. Well, we grow for about 60 or 70 years, but we don't change much. We can express ourselves in wonderful terms to justify our need to fulfill our desires to the utmost. Bet you never thought of yourself that way: a sophisticated crybaby. Did you, Jim?

Worse than that, we live in a society with entire industries—marketing, merchandising, advertising—based on heightening our desires, creating new desires where none existed. I mean, your toothpaste has to be new and improved so you can throw out the old one and buy the new one with a purple stripe instead of a blue stripe. Change the colors, change the size. Harry, it wasn't too long ago the prestige wristwatch was the thinnest and the lightest. And now you need a crane to put it on your wrist because big is in. But you know, it doesn't bother me that those industries exist. What bothers me—I guess I can't even say it bothers me; what is negative about it, in terms of what we should be doing, is that this has now filtered into Judaism. It's filtered into where we as Jews can justify every upgrade from tzitzit (ritual fringes) to a lulav (palm branch) to a megillah (scroll). Yes, there is a mitzvah to get a nice lulav, and a nice etrog (citron), and a nice this, and a nice that, and a nice bar mitzvah, and a nice wedding. It's not supposed to be horrible and depressing, trust me. It's a simcha (celebration). But the fact that there's discussion of what the guidelines should be means it's already gotten out of hand.

How much can a faucet cost? Did you know there are thousand-dollar faucets? And you better make sure you have two sinks, which I could never figure out, because never yet have I seen two people in the bathroom at the same time. But to have two sinks with two sets of faucets that match the tub faucet and the shower faucet, we're up to five grand. We don't have time.

I quote someone I'm proud to say is my friend, Rabbi Frand: “Are we consumers or are we being consumed?” He tells a story about when he went to Eretz Yisrael with his wife for the first time. They visited a family who was peacefully living in the old days on the West Bank, and the children kept asking, “What is life like in America?” To whom? To their mother, who was an uprooted American who made aliyah (immigration to Israel) from luxury to the hard life of the West Bank. She answered as follows: “Back in America, my children, the main thing is shopping. They get up in the morning and eat, and then they go shopping. While they're out, they have lunch, and then they continue shopping. They return home, they eat a little bit more, and go out shopping. Shopping, shopping.”

So now, said our friend, we have a little joke in my house. When my wife is leaving, I say, “Where are you going?” And she says, “Shopping, shopping, shopping.”

There's a side problem with buying just because you can afford it. Sometimes you buy something. It's a luxury. Why not? I work hard. I'm honest. I deserve a break once in a while. And so my thing is watches. His thing is pens. Your thing is an option in your car. You like a different type of home, something. Luxury. There's the regular one. There's the better one. And then there's the luxury. Don't I deserve one once in a while? It's fine. It really is. But just realize, your luxuries become your children's necessities. My kids wouldn't know how to put water in an ice tray. They live to 100. Ice is in that thing automatically. Now, at one time, that was a luxury: an ice maker. In the door, out the door, I don't care. Now it's very standard. But really, there are so many things that we buy that are luxuries that our children will never be able to live without. So when you make that decision to upgrade, think: is it healthy?

Okay, everybody, raise your right hand and say, “I promise to be publicly stricken.” No, I'm not here to teach you that. And I'm also not going to tell you when you're back that enjoying life and having some pleasure is a sin. You're expected to enjoy life. You're expected to serve Hashem happily. You're expected to dress according to your stature. And a certain freedom from financial woe and worry is something you should seek. Standard of living. It's even necessary if you want to focus on Torah and mitzvot. You can't be worrying about that basket of unopened envelopes that has bills in it you can't pay any of. You have one and you have one and you have one. Before I say that, I got seven people lighting up. We're supposed to have a decent standard of living. Hashem wants us to.

But you know what we're not allowed to do? We're not allowed to flaunt it. We're not allowed to be showy. Now, I know you don't know anybody like that, especially not yourself. And we're especially forbidden to flaunt it in front of the other nations of this planet because that makes them jealous, and that makes them angry, and that makes them violent, that makes them vengeful against us. Oh, a lot of them would be that way without flaunting it. But just because there's a fire doesn't mean you throw oil on it.

Somebody mentioned, when I first started speaking, that it affects everybody else. The Gemara tells us there was a time when people were buried differently. The rich people were carried out on a luxurious, I guess we call it chaise, with gold legs, and the poor people on wood, until some of the funerals of the poor were not properly held out of embarrassment. So the rabbis made a takanah. That means a ruling, a standard that everybody uses: wood. No fancy schmancy. And there were several of those types of takanot (rulings) where the wealthy were restricted or inhibited from doing what they could afford because of the effect on people who could not afford it.

You mean I can't make my simcha as luxurious as I can afford because somebody else might feel bad or might be dumb enough to mortgage his house or borrow money he could never afford to pay back? Why should that? God blessed me. It's my daughter. Why not? Well, the Torah says you can't. So when you flaunt it, you affect others negatively. But when you flaunt it, you also expose yourself to Ayin Hara (evil eye). Ayin Hara works through jealousy. If you create talk about yourself, it arouses jealousy, justified or unjustified. There is jealousy. When the jealousy hits Shamayim (Heaven), questions are asked that could be harmful. Are his motives well-intentioned? Is it really only a simcha, or is it ego? The scrutiny is so meticulous and honest, very few could pass.

There's another danger. It's the danger that if we don't use money properly, it starts to affect our personality. Now, it's true, a lot of people have a lot of money, do a lot of good, and are very modest about it. But human nature is to become conceited, to get bossy, to have an “I don't care” attitude. Do we want to arouse goyim? Do we want to arouse jealousy in our friends? Do we want to misappropriate funds that belong to Hashem? We're on rent-a-life. We're on lease. We're using everything temporarily. It can't be the primary focus of our life. Enjoy it. It's a blessing. The more the merrier, but within controls, sensibly. There are a few who do it and many who don't. We have to turn that percentage around, so those who have control it and those who don't don't suffer. When you do a job well, your boss gives you more responsibility. When you distribute your wealth properly, when you treat it responsibly, you can be sure the distributor, Hashem, will give you more. That's my spiel. There's a lot to be said, but not to lose focus, which was the point of tonight's class. I want to leave it at what was said. Think about it and adjust your behavior accordingly to become the best distributor you can, and hope that the boss sees that you are and gives you more to control. Life goes on.