PRIVATE
PROPERTY - TRACTATE AVOT
(PIRKEI
AVOT, ETHICS OF THE FATHERS) Chapter V, Mishna 10
An
interlocutor wrote me in response to my contention that to take part in
banking, such as it exists today, is to partake in a Avayra (a transgression of Torah):
"Doreen:
I agree that the Israeli bank system is more than corrupt, and the choice of an American banker
to be at top of it did not help at all...
But I have to inform you that our sages already 2000 years ago were aware that without interest no economy works and
installed the Heter Iska (a
Rabbinical injunction that purports to allow a transaction that the Torah
forbids), which circumvents the biblical
law.
So if you believe an alternative form of a bank may be of help - I don't
argue about that.
But saying making an Aveyrah?
That's as selling the Chametz (leaven) on Pessach (Passover) or the agricultural produce in a Shmitta
year (years when the fields must be left fallow), problem solved since long,
reverting to the biblical written
word reinterpreted by Chazal (the Sages), that - yes
- that is an Aveyrah!"
I responded:
The
very phrase "circumvents the biblical law" rankles.
I have
been thinking about what is written here and have seen that it should be
considered carefully, because what is written has profound implications for a
banking system we Jews can call our own.
"There
are four character types among men: He who says: "What is mine is yours
and what is yours is mine", is an ignoramus; [he who says] "What is
mine is mine and what is yours is yours" – this is the median
characteristic; and some say that this is the characteristic of the people of
Sodom; [he who says] "What is mine is yours and what is yours is
yours" is a pious and benevolent person; [he who says] "What is yours
is mine and what is mine is mine"
is a wicked person." – TRACTATE AVOT (PIRKEI AVOT) Chapter V, Mishna 10
Let's
consider two points in the above paragraph. First, is it true that one who
says" "What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine" is an
ignoramus? Usually when one fluffs someone off as an "ignoramus", one
knows that the person who holds the position has something important to say and
doesn't want you to hear it. We may always suspect the motives of someone who
calls another and "ignoramus" and presents another's position in
their stead.
Second,
let's consider how the Mishna defines a pious and
benevolent person. He is someone who says "what is mine is yours and what
is yours is yours". If the process of give and take stops with one person,
then the possibility of private property might continue to exist.
However,
if the pious and benevolent person gives to someone who is likewise pious and
benevolent, that person will say: "No! What is mine is yours and what is
yours is yours!" In such a
situation BOTH (or in the case of more than two people) have negated the
concept of private property entirely. They both (or all) abnegate the rights to
their property mutually.
The
laws of commercial interaction called for in Judaism then, if we wish to be
what our ideals hope for, leave us no recourse but the abolition of private
property.
Upon
consideration we see that the only way in which to carry out the mitzvoth of
Pesach without worry of huge amounts of food and value of food be lost and of
the laws of Yovel (Jubilee) is not by heter mekhirim (Rabbinical
injunctions "allowing" sales that the Torah forbids) and not by prozbul (Laws that circumvented the Torah in regard to the
Jubilee), which are nothing but heroic intellectual exercises on the part of
the Rabbis to protect their wealthy who were often their patrons, but by *the
abolition of private property*.
Anarcho-Communism, then, is the logical conclusion of
Jewish Law.
I am
NOT speaking of Marxist Communism, which is nothing other than State-owned
property.
I am
speaking, rather, in terms of Kropotkinian Anarcho-Communism – the utter abolition of property and
currency. This is the only system of Anarchism that will allow for us to keep
the Laws of Torah as they are written and as they are intended.
The
forms of Anarchy generally known as collectivism and mutualism will not fulfill
the needs of the Jewish people, for they still retain either some degree private ownership of property
or collective ownership of capital.
During
Pesach when we are not allowed to own chametz it will
not help us if the chametz is collectively owned. We
would still be faced with the problem of what to do with it during Pesach.
Only
when the grains in our silos belong to no one – when everyone takes what she or
he needs and everyone gives what she or he can we fulfill Jewish Law.
The
problems of the Yovel are solved entirely if there is
no money lending, slavery or land ownership to begin with.
If we
have harvested commonly the year before the shmitta,
the land belonging to no one, we need not be concerned with problems of shmitta. We will have all that we need and no problems of
ownership.
Our
particularly Jewish system of banking, then, must be one of the mere distribution of commodities and services to all who need.
Our
work itself will produce increasing wealth. There is no need for interest
whatsoever.
This too can be
readily understood by a general audience. I've translated the terms that are
transliterated and added a bit of information in parentheses.
I'm posting it here
to give an idea of how religion should be redeemed, not rejected.
Another interlocutor
wrote:
"Actually, Doreen, (the Sage) Hillel (the Elder, 1st C. BCE to 1st C. CE) set up
corporations because people stopped lending money to each other.
Hillel wanted
to make sure the rich would lend (INTEREST FREE, as you
know) to the poor. And Hillel, a Babylonian
immigrant to Eretz Ysrael
(the Land of Israel), was so POOR that when he couldn't PAY the ENTRY fee
(later cancelled by R.
El'azar B. 'Azariyah) for
entering the yeshiva/beith midhrash
(house of study), he climbed up onto the
roof & listened through the skylight & nearly FROZE from the snow.
I know not a few
amount of people who give 20% of the
profits to tzedaqa
(charity) because of the RABBIS & that money fills a LOT of cracks for weak people. PLEASE, if you
are going to say something
negative, better not to, but if you are going to do it anyway,
make sure you cap it off w/something nice. It's so easy to destroy, but
it's so much better to build."
I responded:
Read what you wrote
and see the implications of it.
Hillel had the power to create a precedent
that would institute a millennia-long "circumvention" of Torah.
Yet, he did not use
that same power to compel the rich to continue lending to the poor.
Hillel had the power to take the Jewish
people off course and go against the Word of God for over two thousand years.
Yet you would have us believe that he could not have compelled the rich, who
have always been a small minority, to continue to lend?
If we are to create a
more just economic system, a more Jewish economic system, a more Torah-true
economic system, and of course that will include an entirely new banking
system; we must be entirely honest with ourselves and that will involve
divesting ourselves of our mythology about the Rabbinical
establishment, from its inception.
We will not throw out
the proverbial baby with the cliche bathwater. Where
they were right, they were right and what fits our reality, we must retain. But
that which does not stand the test of time and the possibility we now face of
eradicating poverty, we must dispose of.
There are all kinds
of ways of giving. Tzeddakah (charity coming from the
radical tzeddek -righteousness), as I have written,
need not be monetary, and should not be. Tzeddakah
can be educational, it can be emotional, it can be
social. When we teach someone something
s/he did not know, we have performed an act of Tzeddakah. When we give succor to someone in emotional
straits, we give Tzeddakah. When we tell our wife who
is pregnant with our third child that she is beautiful, we give Tzeddakah. When we tell our unemployed husband that we
love, honor and admire him, we give Tzeddakah. There
will always be ways of giving Tzeddakah. It need not
involve the humiliation of the poor eating out of the hand of the rich.
While giving 20% of
one's income if one can if honorable by today's standards, we can build a world
in which we are all so whole as to be able to give much closer to 100% of
ourselves.
There is no reason to
"circumvent" Torah. It is not an obstacle. There is, however, a need
to see it with new eyes.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel