The ancient Jewish sources hardly make a mention of insurance. The only definite instance is found in the case of an association that makes a mutual guarantee to replace a donkey or ship that is lost to one of the group.[1] Apparently, insurance was a rare phenomenon, one that would only be considered in an especially risky situation such as travel in a desert or by sea. By the time of the rishonim, however, the practice had become more common, in the form of a payment to an insurer agreed upon in advance to guarantee lost or stolen merchandise, and shipments by sea remained the primary focus of legal discussion. As insurance approached its modern form in the last two centuries it extended not only to particularly risky ventures such as transferring freight by sea but to the risks in many aspects of everyday life (such as house, car, or life insurance).

Jewish law itself only sporadically presents an actual obligation to avoid the risk of loss. The trustee of an orphan’s estate is allowed to invest the orphan’s property only where profit is likely and risk is minimal, and we do find the authorities requiring someone handling an orphan’s money to purchase insurance for the orphan son’s inheritance before transporting it on a dangerous journey.[2] But someone who is handling his own money is permitted to choose to accept as much risk as he can afford to lose.

The scant references to insurance (and we’ll discuss other sources shortly) masks genuine profundity about its true importance, which many people seem not to grasp in contemporary society. Many consumers avoid insurance, thinking they are just wasting money on premiums; they would rather invest their money. Others, of a more cautious nature, sometimes over-insure and thus overpay.

Yet investing and insuring serve different but complementary purposes. Investing is about taking risk, whereas insurance is about managing risk. We invest to increase our capital; we insure not to lose it. As Rashi comments on the first of the Kohanic blessings: “May God bless you” with wealth, “and guard you” not to lose the wealth[3] – the idea being that possessing wealth is of no use if the wealth is lost.

A donkey or a ship was a person’s or group’s work vehicle, something whose loss would constitute a wipe out, if it were lost far from home away from all of the money with which one might otherwise be able to buy another. Because one cannot bear such a loss and remain solvent, it is worthwhile to moderately limit one’s earnings by paying premiums to a third party to insure against such a loss.

But because investing and insuring are based on different kinds of thinking, people do not always successfully transition between the two. The extremely risk-averse sometimes insure everything, from letters mailed at the post office to home appliances that might break. Yet consumers can generally afford to replace these costs, especially if they keep a portion of their funds in cash (as discussed in chapter 5). It would be wiser to pay the premiums to themselves, that is, to their own self-insurance fund, rather than to an insurance company. If something breaks or is lost, the funds are readily available; if all is well, they themselves keep the money.

In contrast, those with a risk-taking bent will often neglect to insure items whose loss would bring them, or their loved ones, to financial ruin. Death, disability, catastrophic health care expense, property damage or liability in a car accident are the sort of risks worth paying an insurer to manage. That way a husband’s untimely death does not leave his widow and orphans helpless if the mother is preoccupied with child rearing, and a workplace accident that prevents him from pursuing his occupation need not cripple his family’s finances. In contrast, for young people, who are generally healthy, it may be worthwhile to forgo comprehensive health coverage in favor of cheaper, more limited coverage while insuring against something major and unexpected, such as rehabilitative care. (In Israel, this is not an issue because of the comprehensive coverage to which all citizens are entitled.)

Jewish thought on risk management goes beyond insurance proper. The Talmudic asset allocation we previously discussed is unique specifically because of its built-in risk management via a one-third allocation to cash. Most equity mutual funds keep only a small percentage of cash in order to handle day-to-day fund redemptions; keeping a lot of cash would be a drag on returns during times that markets are going up and would likely end the career of any portfolio manager who did so. But the difference between Talmudic thought and Wall Street practices is that the former is concerned with long-term viability whereas the latter’s focus is on short-term marketing.

It is no wonder that surveys consistently show that mutual fund shareholders consistently underperform not just the market as a whole but the very funds they themselves are invested in. An annually updated study by Dalbar[4] quantifies the gap between investment returns and investor returns, i.e., the returns captured by real investors tracked through records of mutual fund purchases and sales. What Dalbar routinely finds is that investors lose out for behavioral reasons, chasing the performance of hot funds, dumping cold ones and the like.

Though counterintuitive (since inflation erodes the value of uninvested money over time), a stash of cash affords the dry powder – that is, psychological self-control – needed to invest intelligently and effectively. A person without it will feel increasing pressure to sell at a loss, amidst a severe downturn, convinced that the only prudent thing to do is preserve what he can of his rapidly diminishing portfolio. Even somebody with steadier nerves capable of toughing it out may lose his job and just need access to the money. Cash is the key to avoiding either of these highly typical scenarios. Consequently, the Talmudic tripod of land, movable goods and cash accepts risk but manages it.

In negotiating this tripod, we ought to address its substance–should we be buying stocks or property and if so, which stock and which property? Jewish wisdom places the focus (as we noted in chapter 5) where it should be: on asset classes (cash, land and merchandise) rather than drilling down too much. What this teaches is that we should be investors – we should buy and hold assets, unlike the beleaguered U.S. investors surveyed by Dalbar who consistently underperform.

Depending only on one’s labor income (that is, not investing) is itself quite risky if our ability to work is suspended because of sickness or disability; owning but trading (in and out of mutual funds, for example) excessively resembles gambling, which negates the stability advantage of asset ownership over time.

Specifically, the Rambam’s two categories of movable goods and a field offer a clear enough indication of what we should be investing in. In halachic discussions, a field (sadeh) or land (karka) do not generally refer to real estate in the sense of a personal residence (which is usually referred to as a bayit, or home) but to agricultural land on which marketable produce is grown. In contemporary terms, we are speaking of productive farmland or, perhaps more broadly, commercial or residential rental properties that yield a regular income.

Movable goods could encompass the merchandise that we buy from suppliers and sell in our local markets for a profit. If we stretch our thinking a bit, they may be reckoned as stocks of companies that sell products. (These shares are often traded on expectations of a company’s future performance, and are probably more volatile than the products or services themselves, but there is some relationship between the shares and the products they represent.)

One who lacks sophistication in stock-picking (but doesn’t lack sophistication in investing) may benefit from purchasing a low-cost index fund or exchange-traded fund. The advantages of doing so would be to speedily achieve portfolio diversification and, on the flip side, to avoid concentrating risk in one or a few volatile stocks.

As the wise King Solomon put it, “Distribute portions to seven, even to eight, for you never know what calamity will strike the land.”[5] It seems the wise king was thinking in terms of broader asset classes, i.e. if the land has a bad year, it will help to have invested in various business interests or commodities, so that at least some of them will have risen in value despite or because of the disaster.

If you own your home, have ties to one or more businesses (such as your and your spouse’s jobs) and have some cash, then securities markets may provide a convenient place to fill out the rest of King Solomon’s eight portions via the purchase of stock funds and the like.

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[1] Bava Kamma 116b.

[2] Maharashdam, Responsa Choshen Mishpat 46; Rabbi Mosheh Alshich, Responsa 38. The Talmudic passage and responsa cited are cited and discussed in Rabbi Menachem Slae, Insurance in the Halachah, trans. Bracha and Menachem Slae(The Israel Insurance Association, 1982).

[3] Bamidbar 6:24.

[4] Quantitative Analysis of Investor Behavior, published annually by Dalbar 1994 to present, for sale by Dalbar and reviewed by the financial press.

[5] Kohelet 11:2.

A classic dilemma for financial consumers involves whether to get professional advice for services such as wealth management. A key reason people are disinclined to obtain such advice is that it costs money, which would then detract from the overall financial returns they are seeking.

Nowadays, it is indeed easy to research investments online and to buy, sell and hold investments online, all without a professional advisor. And yet investors often stumble in this area, the most intelligent people above all.

A successful doctor or engineer may feel like the math involved in calculating price-to-earnings ratios and making comparisons is simpler than the skills they have acquired in their professions, and assume that investing is comparatively easy. What they don’t usually realize is that securities investing is far more ambiguous and unpredictable. A senior asset management executive once recounted at an investment conference how a client of his firm, who was a physician, had made so many ruinous trades that he finally came to the realization that the best investment he ever made was to throw in the towel and hire a financial advisor to manage his portfolio more objectively.

To be absolutely clear, the reason one might prefer a financial advisor in this case is not because the advisor is a superb asset manager but rather because he is a superb manager of clients, preventing them from harming themselves like the aforementioned doctor. In short: it’s very hard to be unemotional about your own finances, and especially about losses.

And so in deciding whether to hire an advisor, one must probe his own level of discipline and emotional self-control. If the stock market produces an average 7% annualized return net of inflation, and one captures 6% because he’s paying 1% a year to an advisor, he’s likely coming out ahead of most investors who, studies routinely show, capture only a small portion of the market return as a result of emotional investing. While 1% is a standard fee, one can find lower fees, including advisors who offer an hourly rate rather than a percentage of assets under management.

Torah thought encourages seeking advice from those who can provide the right kind. Had King Rechavam listened to the advice of his wise men instead of his foolish friends, he would have saved himself ten tribes and the life of a tax collector.[1]

The advisor one seeks, professional or otherwise, must be completely objective. A Talmudic adage warns, “Beware of one who advises you for his own ends.”[2] If you’re paying for advice, make sure that your payment is the advisor’s only source of income. One who is paid by a third party, i.e., by the company whose product he sells, is not an advisor but a salesman whose loyalty may be divided and whose advice may not be objective – the kind of advice the Sages see hinted at in the Torah’s prohibition of placing a stumbling block before the blind.[3]

Having a monetary interest clouds one’s judgment in matters concerning it: “bribes blind the eyes of the wise, and mar the words of the righteous.”[4] The Talmud remarks that a person is unable to see his own liability. Once a person takes a bribe, this incapacity to be objective extends to that party of the dispute as well, and he is unfit to judge that person’s case, just as if it were his own.[5] Beyond the procedural issue of judging a dispute to which one is a party, a person cannot be objective about himself or his benefactors, in judgment as in advice.

When it comes especially to financial matters, people are apt to spin narratives that they come to believe in, whether soundly or unsoundly based. Inaccurate beliefs and analysis can become quite detrimental to one’s financial well-being. Consequently, a person who has this inclination would likely do well to seek professional advice, whereas those of a more detached nature and who are good decision makers could do well without professional advice.

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[1] 1 Melachim 12.

[2] Sanhedrin 76b.

[3] Rashi, Vayyikra 19:4, from Torat Kohanim.

[4] Devarim 16:19.

[5] Ketubbot 105b.

We have already stated that becoming wealthy is desirable, feasible, and even necessary; that the first fundamental prerequisite for this is to live within one’s means; and that the next step is to build our wealth by trading our intellectual or labor capital for financial capital, while steadily increasing the quality of the assets acquired.

We already learned you should spend less than you earn. How should you invest the rest? That is the subject of this chapter. This is so enormously popular a topic that you could never exhaust the articles pumped out daily by journalists, asset managers and traders via books, magazines and internet investing sites. They have so much to say, and as we’ll see, our Torah sources have very little to say. But the Torah’s advice is worth more than its weight in gold, and isn’t burdened with a sales motive.

Before we hear the Torah’s stance on investing, it would be worthwhile to gain some insight into the approach of the multi-billion-dollar asset management industry. These companies try to project an image of quantitative rigor. One may even get the idea that their portfolio managers might have gone on to careers in rocket science had they not been waylaid by Wall Street’s impressive salaries. And yet there are significant differences between the hard sciences and investing.

A physicist, given all relevant forces, will be able to predict an object’s trajectory. But scroll down to the bottom of any asset management company’s website and you’ll see something like this (usually in very small print): “Mutual fund investment values will fluctuate, and shares, when redeemed, may be worth more or less than original cost.”

The reason statements of this kind are necessary is because investing is not a science, and not even the most quantitatively rigorous asset manager will guarantee their returns.

Take as an example asset manager Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA), chosen because the firm’s marketing literature is replete with references to “financial science” or “the science of capital markets” and the firm’s ties to the academic community.

In an interview several years ago with Sensible Investing TV, DFA co-founder David Booth had a lot to say about data, testing and academic research, but he gave his game away when he let a softer word slip out of his mouth: “Our philosophy is a philosophy that people can stick with” – that is, keeping money in the market and not bailing out in difficult periods. As Booth intuited, what investors really need, more than a science, is a philosophy – a financial plan – that they “can stick with.” Wall Street offers many such plans competing for the consumers’ attention. But the Talmud’s advice is less commonly proffered.

We’ll get to that shortly, but let’s take a step back again to gain a broad overview of our subject. Simply put, investing means putting your capital at risk over a period of time in a fashion that is calculated to reap a gain, but which could generate a loss.

Given all this inherent uncertainty amid fluctuating asset values, the investment industry is required to warn of its products that “past performance is no guarantee of future results.” And that is why asset managers do not guarantee their products. If the risk were small, the cost of the guarantee would be commensurately small. But the risk is large and so even large multinational firms with trillions of dollars in assets make sure that their Mom and Pop clients assume all the risk.

This is why investing is so scary. We work hard to save and invest our hard-earned wealth with no clear picture of the future (yet often via asset managers that hint they have some sort of crystal ball). At some level we understand that unforeseen shocks will occur, putting our portfolios at risk of loss, while at the same time we know that not taking this risk may prevent us from achieving our financial goals: “Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” as the saying goes.

And so the investment industry’s goal is to gain your trust, to come off as wise, experienced portfolio managers who have seen it all and have conviction about their investment decisions: “We believe history can help provide reassurance that our portfolios remain well positioned to weather the storm.” Or: “We remain focused on taking advantage of the pricing opportunities that present themselves in uncertain market environments like the one at hand.” (Note that there has never yet been a certain market environment!)

While all asset managers make similar statements and share a propensity for verbosity, their actual strategies vary greatly. In contrast, the Talmud says very little, but what it says is useful for every market environment, be that bullish, bearish, sideways, topsy-turvy, or any other descriptor you can think of. Here Rabbi Yitzchak offers, in a mere dozen words (in the original Hebrew) what in the financial industry lexicon is termed an asset-allocation model:

A person should always divide his money into three: a third in land, a third in business, and a third at hand.

Bava Metzia 42a

Asset allocation is, as the term suggests, how one apportions his assets into broad asset classes, such as stocks, bonds or cash. Wall Street’s default asset allocation model is 60 percent stocks and 40 percent bonds. Rabbi Yitzchak disagrees with this approach. His recommendation is that a third of your net worth should derive from productive land, a third from business income and/or shares in equity investments; and a third in liquid reserves, i.e., cash or cash equivalents such as gold.

By today’s common industry standards, the Talmudic portfolio looks quite conservative with its call for one-third in cash. The financial services industry usually frowns on cash, preferring somewhat higher-returning bonds.

Unlike Wall Street, which wants to make a sale to a client based on what will have immediate appeal and eschews cash because it is not a fee generator, the Talmud takes an exceedingly long-term view of how each investor can achieve solvency. A story will help illustrate this point.

Some years ago a member of a shul in Los Angeles gave a farewell speech as he set off for a new life in Dallas, noting that there he would be able to afford a home that would suit his growing family. By appearance and of his own admission, he was a person of mere ordinary wealth. He noted in passing that a century earlier his forebears had owned vast tracts of land in Jerusalem. If he owned even a portion of that land today, he would be a multi-billionaire. But when calamity struck, his family was forced to sell its land holdings, and its progeny today was a humble guy with a modest income.

Despite its deceptive simplicity, the Talmud’s pithy statement on asset allocation yields an insight of depth and power: You don’t attain wealth without ownership of assets such as real estate and stocks. But you don’t preserve that wealth from the blows that time and chance deliver without a large dose of liquidity.

No one has perfect clarity about the future, including the high-salaried portfolio managers who boldly interpret bank officials’ policy decisions. The investment industry always presents itself as acutely aware of the inner workings of the global economy. But the beauty of the Talmud’s investment advice is that you don’t need this clarity – rather, you simply assume that as life takes its natural course you will need liquidity to deal with calamity.

But this “conservatism” is more than compensated for by the aggressive footing of investing in risk-based assets such as real estate and businesses. So unlike the schizophrenic market commentators who are always telling you to buy or to sell, the ingenious Talmudic portfolio counsels us to simultaneously take risk and seek safety, and further suggests we diversify our sources of risk.

Wall Street generally only has stocks to sell, so its verbose commentators don’t normally explain that real estate ownership will further cushion your risk, as your land may hold its value while your stocks are falling. So in essence, the Talmudic portfolio is more venturesome because it is two-thirds invested in risk-based assets, albeit in a more diversified manner than the classic Wall Street 60% in stocks.

Meanwhile, the conservative side of the Talmudic portfolio is simultaneously simpler and superior. Bonds may nominally offer higher returns than cash, but they lose their value over time. Bonds are essentially a loan to government or corporate borrowers. In return for your money, you get interest payments until the loan matures, when you get your principal back. As the years go by and the cost of living rises, you are paid back with less valuable money than you initially offered. One might argue that the Talmudic portfolio’s cash would fare even worse, but that is not so, because cash offers optionality. When land values plummet or businesses plunge, you now have an investment fund at the ready with which to purchase risk-based assets cheaply.

What the Talmudic portfolio makes possible, uniquely, is the ability to both increase your wealth and genuinely sleep well at night. In short, this is a plan you “can stick with.”

Relating this to the financial foundation of “spend less than you earn, keep a stash of cash and invest the rest,” the key here is to fund your future income through current income. What that implies is that your future lifestyle bears a relationship to your current lifestyle. If you can live within your means at whatever your current income is, while saving for the purchase of land or business assets, you will then be accumulating capital while paving the way to achieve financial independence, the ability to support yourself one day without working. That, in contemporary terms, is termed retirement, the subject of a future chapter.

One more critical point about the Talmudic portfolio: While its equal weighing among three asset classes is theoretically elegant, it is difficult in practice to maintain. One’s balance sheet is constantly shifting. Your home may be going up in value while your business interests decline, and so on. Our economic lives are dynamic, and everyone’s finances differ according to his unique journey in life and lifecycle stage. Think of the Talmudic tripod rather as an ideal to which we rebalance periodically, even over a period of years, as best we can.

In the highly practical chapter of Hilchot Deot we have already had recourse to,[1] the final halachah is all about acting with integrity. It begins:

A talmid chacham should conduct his business dealings in truth and faith. His “no” means “no” and his “yes” means “yes.”

The first notable thing about Rambam’s discussion is that it is addressed to a Torah scholar, who must set the example to every Jew of how one conducts himself in business. And the first requirement is that what emerges from one’s lips is sacred. We must keep our promises even if it is to our disadvantage. In business, market conditions are constantly shifting. Continuing with the sale or service – even if, say, the cost of offering it unexpectedly rose – affirms both truth and good faith: The former establishes the Jewish businessman’s reliability and the latter his trust in Hashem, the source of our wealth. The Jewish businessman knows that God will compensate our losses.

He is stringent with himself in his accounting, but gives and concedes to others when he buys from them, and he shouldn’t be exacting with them. And he pays for merchandise immediately.

This honesty we described above, in which the Jewish businessman would rather bear a loss than not fulfill his word, he applies to himself, but to his counterparties he gives the benefit of the doubt and offers easy terms for their unpaid balances. And by paying his debts immediately, he preempts even the momentary impression that he isn’t going to pay. Not only does such conduct sanctify God’s Name, but it furthers people’s desire to do business with him, as it enhances the attractiveness of doing business with a talmid chacham, as we’re all meant to be.

And he does not act as a conditional guarantor or unconditional guarantor or become a debt collector for another lender.

Although the talmid chacham can be relied upon to pay anything he owes post haste, he doesn’t accept responsibility for debts he may be unable to pay. Thus, if he were to guarantee his friend’s debt, conditionally or unconditionally, and then the friend, through no fault of his own, became unable to pay off his debt, our Torah scholar risks his reputation if he cannot step in immediately and pay his friend’s debt as he would his own. The idea is that one does not act out of the goodness of his heart if he risks a failure to sanctify God’s Name through immediate action to make good a loss – or by putting himself in a position where he must pressure the borrower to pay up or the lender to extend the loan.[2] The same principle applies to a debt collector, whose duty to the lender restrains him from acting with the magnanimity towards the debtor that should characterize a talmid chacham.[3]

He obligates himself in matters of buying and selling where the Torah does not obligate him so that he can stand unalterably by his word. Yet if others are liable to him by law, he extends and forgives, lends and is generous.

Beyond keeping one’s commitments even when market conditions make doing so unfavorable, the nuance added here is that the talmid chacham’s verbal commitments are paramount even when he never performed an act of acquisition, and thus is not legally bound to move forward. But when the shoe is on the other foot, the talmid chacham does not insist on his rights. And while, as we learned above, he does not involve himself in other people’s loans as a guarantor or collector, he himself provides loans and, when necessary, forgives them. The halachah concludes:

He should not encroach upon his friend’s craft nor should he trouble anyone in the world all his life. The general principle is he should be one of the persecuted and not the persecutors, one of the insulted and not the insulters. And of a person who performs all of these deeds and their like, Scripture says:[4] “And He said to me: You are My servant, Israel in whom I am glorified.”

The Rambam concludes this halachah on integrity in business by reaffirming the overarching idea that a talmid chacham conducts his business dealings with honesty and good faith. He has no reason to enter the booming business conducted by a colleague because he trusts that God will grant him and his colleague what He desires to bestow. He therefore acts with piety, in the spirit of “what is mine is yours and what is yours is yours.”[5]  This makes good business sense too, as what is hot today is cold tomorrow. Trends in business are constantly shifting, and by the time the temptation to jump into a profitable area persuades you, it has already persuaded several others, and then suddenly you find yourself in a saturated market. The talmid chacham’s approach is thus less about zigzagging and more about constancy. Markets may wax and wane, but his reputation for integrity only grows.

​Before we are examined, it is immensely helpful to know the questions we will be tested on. Those six questions which we are asked on the Day of Judgment underscore the importance of Torah, which make up half of them. Earning a living and raising a family emerge from two others. If we do all of these things, we certainly will anticipate salvation, the sixth item on the divine checklist.

In reality, all of these issues are interdependent. We can’t do anything properly without the constant guidance of Torah and immersion in its holiness. But as our challenge is not merely immersion but also imparting something of value, what we do to uplift the material world will decisively show if we passed our test in life.

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[1] Deot 5:13

[2] As Mishlei 6:3 advises a guarantor to do, but which is uncharacteristic of the talmid chacham that the Rambam describes.

[3] Compare Rashi, Shevuot 31a s.v. זה הבא בהרשאה.

[4] Yeshayahu 49:3.

[5] Avot 5:10.

Pirkei Avot, the fundamental statement of the value system of our Sages, extols work as an accompaniment to the lofty goal of learning Torah:

Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says: Beautiful is the study of Torah with the way of the world [derech eretz, i.e. earning a livelihood], as the effort of both makes sin forgotten; and any Torah unaccompanied by work will ultimately come to nothing and cause sin.

Avot 2:2

That is a pretty strong statement that should give pause to anyone who thinks they will ascend the lofty heights of Torah study and not sully themselves with work. The Torah expresses realism about the necessity for human effort and recognizes that Torah study is not merely theoretical but is informed by derech eretz, i.e., the arena in which life experience such as work tests us.

In a classic Talmudic discussion,[1] Rabbi Yishmael says Jews must study Torah, yet also pursue derech eretz: the Torah commands, “You shall gather your grain, your wine and your oil.”[2] Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai protests, if Jews are busy all four seasons of the year plowing, planting, harvesting, threshing and winnowing, what will be of the Torah? Rather, Hashem will have others provide for those who perform His will. The Sage Abbaye concludes, only somewhat ambiguously, that many acted like Rabbi Yishmael and succeeded, and many acted like Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai and didn’t succeed.

Rabbi Pinchas HaLevi Horowitz, the 18^th century scholar known as the Ba’al HaHafla’ah, infers from the wording “like Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai” that those following his path purported to be like Rabbi Shimon but did not truly replicate his essential characteristics. Had they truly been on his level, they surely would have merited God’s help and succeeded. But not everyone with such high aspirations has the requisite traits.[3]

In modern Israel, full-time Torah study in lieu of work is now a deeply rooted social phenomenon. While there are halachic decisors who encourage the Rabbi Shimon path (and this book does not attempt pesak halachah), the lens of Jewish history shows that many other sages of Israel followed the Rabbi Yishmael path. The Rambam famously expresses this idea in his Mishneh Torah:

Among the great Sages of Israel were wood choppers and water drawers and blind men. But nevertheless they would engage in the study of Torah day and night, and were among the transmitters of the oral law from person to person back to Mosheh Rabbeinu.

Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:9

In other words, these were not marginal figures but the most important scholars of each generation, and yet they worked, and worked hard, for a living even at the most menial of all labors.

In any case, work experience provides more than just a skill to list on a résumé. Effort is itself a formidable value, and the Talmud ranks one who benefits from his own toil as greater than one who possesses fear of heaven.[4] As anyone who has worked as an employee can relate to, work requires developing skill and professionalism. The professional Torah learner would do well to learn how to devote that same level of energy and accountability demanded in the work world to the learning of Torah. If a boss of flesh and blood demands a certain level of work, how much more does God demand of someone who takes it upon himself to work for Him?

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[1] Berachot 35b.

[2] Devarim 11:14

[3] Cited in Chiddushei Chatam Sofer, Sukkah 36a. The remark is cited in Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, Eim Habanim Semeichah 3:32, also available in English translation (trans. Moshe Lichtman, Kol Mevaser Publications, 2000, page 303).

[4] Berachot 8a.