Category Archives: Judaism & Jews

What The Torah & Talmud Teach About Moral Hazard (Bailouts)

Free Markets, Hebrew Testament, Judaism & Jews, Justice

In “Jews Against Judaism,” I highlighted The Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies’ efforts to educate about Judaism’s philosophical affinity with the free market.

Now JIMS, with which I am affiliated, has inaugurated the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics.

Delivering the inaugural lecture was Nobel laureate economist Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann. Professor Aumann addressed the role ascribed to economic incentives in the Torah and Talmud—for example, “unfettered price competition” and the imprimatur to collect on loans.

Professor Aumann also talked about the many discussions of the moral hazard problem in the Torah and Talmud, and how moral hazard is currently at the heart of the faulty proposals currently being offered to solve the current financial crisis. The term moral hazard is used by economists to describe the fact that when an individual, a firm or an institution is “insured”, there is an incentive to act less carefully and take harmful risks.

This should not surprise anyone who appreciates the centrality of justice in the Jewish tradition. What are economic laws if not natural laws? And what is the natural law if not immutable and just? It follows from this that to adhere to the economic laws of nature is to be faithful to truth and justice.

“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” (Devarim 16:20)

What The Torah & Talmud Teach About Moral Hazard (Bailouts)

Economy, Free Markets, Hebrew Testament, Judaism & Jews, Justice

In “Jews Against Judaism,” I highlighted The Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies’ efforts to educate about Judaism’s philosophical affinity with the free market.

Now JIMS, with which I am affiliated, has inaugurated the Center for the Study of Judaism and Economics.

Delivering the inaugural lecture was Nobel laureate economist Professor Robert (Yisrael) Aumann. Professor Aumann addressed the role ascribed to economic incentives in the Torah and Talmud—for example, “unfettered price competition” and the imprimatur to collect on loans.

Professor Aumann also talked about the many discussions of the moral hazard problem in the Torah and Talmud, and how moral hazard is currently at the heart of the faulty proposals currently being offered to solve the current financial crisis. The term moral hazard is used by economists to describe the fact that when an individual, a firm or an institution is “insured”, there is an incentive to act less carefully and take harmful risks.

This should not surprise anyone who appreciates the centrality of justice in the Jewish tradition. What are economic laws if not natural laws? And what is the natural law if not immutable and just? It follows from this that to adhere to the economic laws of nature is to be faithful to truth and justice.

“Justice, justice shall you pursue.” (Devarim 16:20)

Jews Against Judaism

Capitalism, Democrats, Economy, Free Markets, Judaism & Jews

The excerpt is from “Jews Against Judaism,” which you can read on WND.com:

“Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) has become a popular participant on cable TV shout-fests. The pretty blond puts her velvety voice and forceful personality to use in promoting Obama’s statist schemes. (“Obama, a leftist big-government progressive”, has, naturally, captured the media’s imagination more so than “McCain, a conservative big-government progressive.”) …

Wasserman Schultz’s Jewishness is central to her political pitch. (But her double-barreled, affectatious surname isn’t; so I’m dropping it.) Her congressional page states that she is “the first Jewish Congresswoman ever elected from Florida.” Another of Wasserman’s listed accomplishments is to have called on the president to declare a Jewish American Heritage Month. He, and the House, obliged her. Wasserman regularly touts Obama, former friend to race-baiters and Israel haters, as a solid ally of Israel. …

Jews, with the exception of Wasserman and her ilk, have always been among the most individualistic, original, and entrepreneurial members of American society. Think of Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and Milton Friedman. Or, of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, the eponymous mastermind of Dell Inc., casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and many more.

Unfortunately, fellow Jews like Wasserman have done more than their fair share to swell the counterproductive ranks of the State. The congresswoman fits the well-founded stereotype of the well-to-do, left-liberal Jew. …

An existential contradiction, really. Overwhelmingly self-reliant and self-made, Jews thrive in the free market—and in bygone, perilous times have survived by it. Nevertheless, they’ve consistently championed an elaborate, intrusive welfare state.

“American Jews are the most educated ethnic group in the United States,” write Corinne and Robert Sauer of the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies. …

“Champaign Socialism” is how the Sauers characterize this penchant among American Jews—they tenaciously defy “any empirical regularity that links higher income levels with more conservative, or economically liberal (in the European sense), political positions.”

The complete column, “Jews Against Judaism,” now on WND.com.

Pedigreed Islamic Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism, Islam, Judaism & Jews

In a WorldNetDaily.com review of our friend Andrew Bostom’s new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History, Alyssa A. Lappen
writes:

“Particularly since the late, lifelong Muslim Brother, Yasser Arafat, shifted anti-Israel jihad into fifth gear in September 2000, several Middle East and Islamic scholars have repeatedly asserted that 20th and 21st century Islamic anti-Semitism sprang solely from Nazi and European Christian influence.”

“Even now, Islamophiles like Bernard Lewis preach (as it were) that virulent Jew-hatred is not inherent to Islam – but rather, anti-Semitism migrated to the Middle East with European colonialism. The Quran uses ‘hard words … about the Jews,’ even Lewis admits. Yet under Islamic rule, he claims they were ‘only rarely subject to persecution’ and ‘their situation was never as bad as in Christendom at its worst. …'”

“Dr. Andrew G. Bostom’s extensive, scientific and largely unprecedented new book, ‘The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History’, definitively disproves such claims. (Full disclosure: I copy-edited several of these first-time English translations, and proofread many chapters.)”

“Publication of this landmark book informs self-respecting scholars, they can no longer shamelessly blame Christianity as the sole source of anti-Semitism – or more importantly, that Islam does not and never had its own innate brand of loathing for the Jewish people. Islam detests non-Muslims generally – whom sharia laws institutionally oppress and tax as underclass ‘dhimmis’ – but inveighs especially intense odium against Jews…”

ILANA here: almost intractably ingrained among Jews themselves is the perception of Christianity as a source of all things bad for them. Not a week goes by when I am not laboriously explaining to relatives that, no, Hagee is not about to ride into Pittsburgh to conduct a pogrom. Jews, especially those residing in Eurabia, had better begin to better tell their friends from their foes. I imagine it must piss off a friend immensely when nothing he does satisfied the Stiff-Necked Ones.

Read the rest here, and, naturally, buy the Bostom book.