From Chapter 1: The Kabbalah of Livelihood

Jewish aphorism tells us that a man shows his character in three ways: by his cup (that is, his appetite), his pocket (his relationship to money), and his anger. Here we will concern ourselves with the "pocket" and how much we reveal of ourselves when dealing with it. In everyone's pocket, questions of survival and its boundaries come to light—questions related to excess, ownership, and insecurity. The same tradition says:

"The longest path is the one that leads from the heart to the pocket." We can't get from the heart to the pocket without looking at life as a whole and all its meanings. How we relate to our pocket reveals who we are and where we stand within the immense Market of values that we call reality. This is the Market of exchanges and interactions of all kinds from which we have learned to derive the concept of economic markets. It represents the infinite quantity of small and great businesses that take place in the universe at any given moment. These businesses are made possible through the mediation of an incredible diversity of "currencies." These "moneys," which can be studied through the model of our ordinary, daily money, are the main focus of this book.

Jewish tradition has much to contribute to this inquiry. Jews have had their image stereotypically attached to the love of money. They've seen their patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—turned into the main characters of jokes about stinginess and greed. Their greatest symbol of impurity, the pig, has been mockingly promoted to best friend in the form of a piggy bank. They have been caricatured with long noses, presumed to guide them through the gutters of our financial systems.

I will avoid making apologies, which would inevitably lead to an admission of bias on my part. But I would like to invite the objective reader who is familiar with the bypaths of this world to share a less judgmental analysis. I speak to those who recognize that over and above considerations of good and evil, human experience is distinguished by the constant adjustment of our intentions as they come into contact with reality. Our capacity to transform experience into culture and tradition allows future generations to relate to a fixed body of morals and ethics, which they can develop, criticize, and improve. This process leads us to self-knowledge of our own humanity.

In a way, Jews are indispensable to the collective memory of the West. Upon them the West projects many of its social fantasies, as well as many of civilization's sublimated and repressed experiences, which tend to manifest in those perceived as being "other."

In fact, the "negative" characteristics projected onto Jews are often revealing of their cultural efforts towards behaviors that are the very opposite of these stereotypes. People often fantasize about the rabbi who eats pork behind the closed doors of the temple, or the priest who holds secret trysts in the confession booth, or the politician who conducts fraudulent transactions from the basement of the senate. We betray, with these thoughts, the great burden placed upon those whose task it is, at least nominally, to challenge our animal instincts and reactions. In other words, culture (which challenges us in precisely this way) creates in us a desire for its own collapse, for the unmasking of its anti-human theoretical propositions of right and wrong, construction and destruction.

Jews, as creators and promoters of what was to become the ethical heritage of the West, fell prey to a reaction against the restrictions it imposed on human behavior. They originated the fundamental law "Thou shalt not kill," and yet they are charged with the great historical "murder." The Jews of the Middle Ages—a period of urbanization characterized by a disregard for hygienic and sanitary concerns—whose traditional customs were known exactly for their hygienic content, are nevertheless depicted as filthy and rejoicing in their filth. Despite being bound by severe dietary prescriptions, they are accused of cannibalistic rituals involving Christian children. And finally, Jews are saddled with a reputation for being obsessive about money. Their God, of whom they are not permitted to make images, is assigned the shape of a dollar sign. And yet it is true that the Jews respect money; for in it they see a content which speaks of the true distance between the heart and the pocket.

The deeper meaning of money—and, in the broader sense, of earning a living (parnasah, livelihood)—is dealt with in Jewish tradition both ethically and with courageous humanity. The Kabbalah of Money is an offering of rabbinical and mystical insights into an ecology of money, involving the health of all forms of exchange, transaction, and interdependence. In it, we will take "Kabbalah" to be above all a methodology for understanding in a profound way things that appear to be superficial, uncovering hitherto unrealized dimensions of our everyday reality. We will be broadly referring to "the rabbis" (including the commentators cited in the Talmud as well as legendary figures of the Hasidic world) as the keepers of a method of interpretation which understands reality as having multilayered dimensions. The "peeling" of those dimensions, from the most manifest and evident to those which are hidden and occult, is what came to be known as Kabbalah.

Literally the term comes from the root verb "to receive" (kibel), and it hints at the ancient tradition passed on and received from generation to generation. In its most basic reduction, it proposes that through the simple we can get to the complex; from the concrete to the abstract; from the detail to the large picture. Here we will be applying this method to the concept of "money."

The rabbis tell us that through money, we establish day-to-day situations that uncover our bigotry and illusions and expose us in a way only practice and empirical experimentation can otherwise do. We are as we react, we are what we believe, and our money is an extension of our reactions and beliefs. Based on the money that moves in and out of our lives, we structure our comprehension of the world. And this is one of the main factors in determining our understanding of reality: how much things and people are worth to us, and how much we are worth to them.

The rabbis, after thoroughly analyzing money, have chosen to treat it in much the same way as they consider our bodily existence. They recognize, without overlooking the importance of the soul and of intention, that the true reality of the body is an indispensable tool in understanding who we are and what path we should take in life.

I therefore invite the reader to stroll through the familiar world of the pocket. I propose a tour through this world of Markets, a journey into the shadows cast by money on emotional and spiritual dimensions. We shall look at our exchanges in such a way that the dark shadow of our souls is cast off from our money, and we come to accept our human limits of wealth.

In reality, money is usually seen as something dirty that we are ashamed to talk about. People have less trouble telling friends about intimate sexual matters than they have in sharing the size of their bank accounts or their salaries. Children very rarely know how much their parents earn.

Yet money is not something evil. The Spanish philosopher Ibn Zabara asked, "What is the cause of death? Life itself." Similarly, we may ask: "What is the cause of money?" The answer is that it has not come into existence as a means of oppression or an instrument of greed; rather, money—surprisingly—arises from the human desire for justice and the hope for a better world. Over time, money has absorbed fundamental traces of human nature that can now be understood by paying close attention to the values we attach to it and its symbolism.

Yes, Jews respect money—real (that is, uncorrupted) money that multiplies the possibilities of livelihood and frees up their time for spiritual study, for learning. And they know that this kind of learning is like sap: it is life itself.

What kind of money is this that can be the topic of sacred writings? What kind of money is this that religious people busy themselves with it? What money is this that can also be used as currency in the world-to-come or in paradise? How should we deal with a Market of existence that underprices meanings and deflates our time and values, while at the same time inflating our dissatisfaction and bringing on a recession of our potential? The rabbis have proposed answers to some of these questions in their search for a "strong currency."