Rabbi Daniel Lapin Speaks On Hashem, Money, And The Master Plan

On Sunday night, February 23, Let’s Get Real with Coach Menachem featured a virtual lecture with Rabbi Daniel Lapin, author of Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money, as well as other books on this topic, and he is the host of the Daniel Lapin Show.

The Mishnah asks: Who is wealthy? He who is happy with his portion. A cheilek is a portion. So, you have to have a cheilek. Each person has his own cheilek. It’s important to use Torah values to reach an understanding of our relationship with money.

We have to be very careful. You can find short p’sukim that will support any position you want to take. So, we don’t pasken halachah based on slogans. There’s another mishnah in Pirkei Avos that says that you have to drink water and eat bread and salt. A Gemara teaches that G-d’s presence doesn’t rest on anyone who doesn’t have self-discipline, who doesn’t have wisdom, and who doesn’t have money. So, you can’t determine halachah based on these slogans. We have to say to ourselves that there is a vast world out there. There is written Torah and Oral Torah, and it is possible to extract from that what Hashem wants from us in practical terms. It takes a talmid chacham to do that.

In our own learning, Rabbi Lapin said that we have to make sure that we don’t stop with a simple slogan. For every slogan pointing North, there is one pointing South. The Rambam says that the entire purpose of bread on the Shulchan in the Beis HaMikdash is to kickstart the economy of B’nei Yisrael. Bread has several meanings in Tanach. One important meaning of bread is financial wherewithal.

To understand what Hashem intended for human economic interaction, we have to make sure we comb throughout all of Chazal to get the comprehensive picture. We have to make a distinction between things Jews do and halachah. Imagine if historians in the 22^nd century will say that in the early 20^th century, it was a Jewish custom to have Xmas trees. In the 1940s and 1950s, many Jews did that. It might be what they did, but that’s not a Jewish custom.

You will find that many of us look down on money and wealth. Rabbi Lapin noted that the k’subah details the obligation of the husband to support his wife. He shared how today it is hard for women who are supporting the family and raising children at the same time. Young mothers are under a lot of stress because men in our world have a different approach to money.

Magnificence of Torah is the tension between din and rachamim. Anyone who has been a parent knows that you need both in raising a child. The miracle of Torah hashkafah is that we balance din and rachamim. Christians focus on rachamim, and Muslims focus on the din. You need din and rachamim together. No one else can retain the tension of these two opposites existing. Christianity regards money with great discomfort. Sephardic Jews have less fear of money. They don’t equate poverty with virtue. In the Ashkenazic world, there is a discomfort with money, which he suspects is owed to our Christian neighbors more than Torah sources.

From the Torah perspective, the correct definition of money is evidence that you helped another one of Hashem’s children. There are only three ways of getting money. Charge taxes, or steal, or do things for others so that they are then happy to give you money in exchange. Money is evidence that you have served another person in the world. Money is really a certificate of appreciation. Hashem set up a system of formalized, institutionalized chesed, where G-d incentivizes us to take care of one another.

He shared that he is opposed to the law of attraction, which became popular around 20 years ago. It teaches that if you get the right mindset, then the universe will send you what you need. The Torah perspective is different.

He shared that the Torah says that it’s not good for man to be alone, and this means its not good for any human being to be isolated. “The Torah is a book of connection.” Without the laws of Mishpatim, it would be impossible for us to live together. Humans will have misunderstandings. There has to be a system of din to make it possible for us to live together. The Choshen Mishpat enables human beings to live as friends and neighbors.

There are two solutions to the problem of not being alone. First, the answer is male-female relationships, which is the ultimate answer to existential loneliness. The second answer is bread, which is a reminder that you are different from animals. This is one reason that all Western religions treat bread as sacramental. Bread is holy, given by Hashem, and it’s a collaborative enterprise of human beings to produce bread. The Rambam says that lechem is the money. It kickstarts the economy of am Yisrael. There’s an expression: Can you lend me some dough? It comes from this Chazal that bread means money. Thus, the solution from Hashem for not being alone is male-female relationships, which removes loneliness, gives us families, and also money. “The only way to make money is to do acts of chesed for other people. The more people you do things for, the more money you get.”

Business relationships produce friendships and relationships. There is no word for “retirement” in lashon ha’kodesh, because leaving your job and isolating kills off your connection. When you work, you have so many people to connect to, and when you retire, you are suddenly alone. This is terribly dangerous.

So, making money is part of being a civilized member of society. It’s evidence you are helping take care of other people. When Hashem tells Moshe Rabbeinu to go to Pharaoh to say we have to take B’nei Yisrael out and they will serve Me in the desert, the word avodah means worship of Hashem. In Sefer Sh’mos, in the Aseres HaDibros, the Fourth Commandment is Yom HaShabbos. It says: Six days you must do avodah and do all your work. Here it means taking care of business. Yehoshua tells B’nei Yisrael: My family and I will do avodas Hashem. Thus, avodah is worship and it’s also taking care of business, which means taking care of other humans and their needs.

By Susie Garber