The world of work is one of the primary arenas of our life as Jews. This may sound like a bland, too-obvious-to-be-stated idea. Albanians and Zimbabweans also work. Yet nothing in Judaism comes without some novel insight. Because of the unique relationship between God and the Jewish people, it might be thought that our service lies only in the sublime areas of Torah and mitzvot and not in the mundane pursuits that occupy the nations of the world.

But work isn’t a mundane pursuit. And as long as we are not living miraculously off the manna from Heaven as our forebears did in the Wilderness, work, and the income it produces, remains the determining factor of the household balance sheet.

The necessity of work is a Divine decree imposed on Adam and all of his descendants: “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread.”[1] For all of humanity, work is the effort we must make for our sustenance as well as the creative expression of our unique talents. But for Jews specifically, work is a form of Divine service. In other words, it does not contradict our unique role as bearers of Torah, but enables it. We can perhaps grasp this point most immediately by looking at the culmination of our life in this world: yom hadin, the day of judgment. The Talmud teaches that we are asked six questions on this awesome occasion:

Did you conduct your business dealings honestly?

Did you set times for Torah study?

Did you engage in procreation?

Did you anticipate salvation?

Did you sharpen your mind with wisdom?

Did you understand one matter from another?

Shabbat 31a

Half of these questions involve Torah learning, while only one – the very first – involves our business conduct. The choice of questions is not random. Work heads the list of demands predominated by Torah precisely because work is a form of Torah – it is Torah in practice. To paraphrase the Ba’al Shem Tov, we must not only learn Bava Metzia (a Talmudic tractate focusing on business law) – we must do Bava Metzia.[2]

The reason for the supreme importance of work is that few things test us so thoroughly. About 100 of the 613 mitzvot relate to financial issues.[3] These commandments refine us as Jews, and our dealings in the world of business apparently require a greater degree of such refinement (and hence, more mitzvot).

It is in this arena that our actions reveal how honest we really are; how we respond to the demands of an exacting boss; how much effort we make to achieve excellence in our trade or profession; how well we serve customers, even difficult ones; how responsibly we pay our vendors; how careful we are not to trample over merchants when we are the customers. In short, our record in the business world clearly attests to our level of integrity, our reliability and our treatment of others. The Talmud sees in the Psalmist’s phrase “lands of the living”[4] a metaphor for the marketplace.[5]

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[1] Bereishit 3:19.

[2] Cited in Ba’al Shem Tov, Behar 5.

[3] 77 of the Rambam’s count of commandments are sorted into the books dealing with torts, acquisition and business. When added to the commandments relative to charity, priestly and levitical gifts, the number passes 100.

[4] Tehillim 116:9.

[5] Yoma 71a.

After a field and a home in the Rambam’s order comes a wife. Being a good husband is conducive to wealth, according to the Talmud:

Rabbi Chelbo says: A person should always be careful with the honor of his wife, for blessing is only found in a person’s house by virtue of his wife, as it is written, “And Avram was benefited for her sake.”[1]

Bava Metzia 59a

Marriage is all about two people growing together. Disappointments such as may occasionally arise may actually further one’s individual growth, whereas magnifying those irritations by confrontations and divorce puts that growth and development into reverse.

In that light, one can see married life and wealth as parallel tracks of growth. The Talmud[2] also draws a parallel through an allegorical interpretation of a proverb:[3] “All the days of the poor are bad” hints at a husband who has a bad wife. “But the constant feaster is of good cheer” hints at a husband who has a good wife.

Financial planning professionals are fond of telling their clients, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” We can see from all of the foregoing that with the Torah’s guidance we needn’t grope in the dark as we set about ordering our financial lives.

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Next week we look at work as the determining factor of the household balance sheet.

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[1] Bereishit 12:16.

[2] Sanhedrin 100b.

[3] Mishlei 15:15.

So why is it so important to have a field (a productive asset) and a home?

“Your life will be dangling before you, and you will fear day and night, and you will not believe in your life.”[1] The Sages read this verse as a description of someone who has no field of his own, forced to rely on others to have enough food to get by the next year, the next week, or even tomorrow.[2] It also well describes the feeling of depression a person out of work experiences. It is thus of paramount importance to have a stream of income, and a back-up plan for when that stream runs dry.

The ancient Judean farmer accomplished this through his field. If blight threatened his pomegranate production, he could crank up his olive vat. In the modern economy, which is no less subject to cycles of boom and bust, a journalist can pivot to copywriting, a husband can rely on his wife’s income while he gets back up on his feet, and so on.

People are resilient and can overcome adversity, but having a field – be it a field of professional expertise or a field of wheat – is essential. So is a home, a financial objective far harder to achieve in the modern economy than in ancient times when land and building materials were more accessible.

The house, next on the Rambam’s list, provides a further level of security. The financial insecurity accompanying the lack of a home of one’s own has recently been shown in a Harvard study, which found that the household budgets of about one-third of Americans aged 65 or older are being ravished by the costs of housing. As we might expect, it shows Americans who own their own homes fare better than renters, and that the cohort aged 65 and up have achieved the highest rate of homeownership of any age bracket.

So what is the problem? The problem is that those within this age group who don’t own their homes, i.e., the poorer segment of American seniors, are paying nearly twice as much for their housing as their wealthy cohorts. Fully half of these “cost-burdened” households are spending 50 percent or more of their income on housing, with the remainder expending at least 30 percent.

The report also notes a consequent large increase in multigenerational housing, with the proportion of older Americans living with children, grandchildren, parents or in-laws having reached 20% of the older population.

Seniors in a financial predicament, but with a home, could at least rent out, or sell the home. In short, for long-term solvency and stability, there’s no place like home.

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[1] Devarim 28:66.

[2] Menachot 103b.

The Rambam has taught us that we should sequence our financial lives intelligently by investing in a career, saving for a home and then marrying. In the next halachah,[1] the Rambam teaches us how to build on these prerequisites to achieve wealth and stability. He begins this short but powerful halachah as follows:

It is forbidden for a person to renounce ownership or to give away to charity all of his property and become a burden on society.

Here the Rambam condemns one who, out of foolish piety, abandons his wealth such that he now requires the support of others. In fact, even dedicating away all of one’s possessions to the Temple is explicitly outlawed by the Torah, offering a lesson to anyone who would throw away his wealth for a less worthy cause.[2]

Likewise, benefiting one’s heirs should not come at the expense of one’s own financial independence. While parents’ natures will always incline them to assist their children, the Talmud censures a parent who bequeaths his property to his children in his lifetime, an act lacking foresight which turns his children, in effect, into his masters and does not enhance kibbud av va’em (honoring one’s parents).[3]

As the Rambam continues this halachah, he offers what may be the most precise and concise statement of financial planning ever given:

And one should not sell a field and buy a home, nor [sell] a home to buy movable property, or use the proceeds of the sale of his home for trade. However, he may sell movable goods to buy a field. The principle of the matter is that a person should move up in the quality of his assets and trade the transient for the enduring.

In these pithy words, the Rambam teaches the path to financial success, a path increasingly taken backwards, to disastrous results, in today’s get-rich-quick culture.

In the Rambam’s lexicon, a field is a productive asset. So he is saying: Don’t sell your business to buy that luxury home. Don’t sell your home to buy toys like a fancy car or for commodities to sell in your store. Rather, from the income earned through your trade or profession (i.e., from the sale of “movable goods”) you should purchase productive assets (i.e., a vineyard or perhaps a bigger or more profitable business), or a home. The rule: there is a quality continuum when it comes to investment assets, and your goal should be advancing along that continuum (by acquiring a growing business or income-producing land) as against items that will not retain their value over time.

What makes this get-rich-slow advice so insightful is that it does not merely help us understand how to become wealthy, but it fully matches a person’s lifecycle requirements. That is to say, the failure to increase wealth as life progresses risks exposure to financial shocks, like losing one’s source of income, incurring high medical expenses and worst of all – the item with which the Rambam opened this halachah – the indignity of becoming a burden on society (be that one’s family, charitable handouts or governmental aid).

So, for example, losing one’s job is a financial shock, but one that is enormously cushioned by owning one’s home. Owning an income-producing business offers greater still financial security.

Whether in Israel, the U.S. or elsewhere, the financial lifecycle looks the same: A young person has no financial capital, but he has intellectual or labor capital. That is to say, a young person trades his educational training or willingness to work hard for money, and the process of wealth accumulation begins. As time goes on, the person will marry. The wedding gifts usually constitute the first big boost in financial capital the couple will receive aside from what they produce through their own career accomplishments. They can now begin saving and investing for their short-, medium- and long-term goals.

Short-term goals typically include buying a home and building an emergency reserve to support them through any financial shocks along the way (e.g., job losses), as well as paying for expensive holidays like Pesach; medium-term, they need to save for their children’s education, bar mitzvahs, family vacations and weddings; longer-term, they need to plan for the day when they no longer can or wish to work, i.e., retirement, including reserves for not uncommon late-life medical needs, such as home health care or assisted living.

At the end of this cycle, our formerly young couple may have no more intellectual or labor capital to offer, but should have the highest degree of financial capital of their entire lives. People generally need to be wealthy, or at least wealthier, as they age. And financial planning, as the Rambam explains it, addresses this need: first by encouraging the accumulation of income, and second by suggesting we make astute trades, by trading our accumulated capital for assets of ever-increasing quality, such as an income-producing property that our now-elderly couple can live off of as their strength wanes.

The Rambam complements this idea of making astute trades, in the final sentence in the halachah we have been discussing, by adding that we should not make imprudent ones. He writes:

And his intention should not be to enjoy temporary benefit or to benefit a little and lose a lot.

This is not about trading stocks, which is usually a losing proposition, but rather about trading what is of lesser value for what is of greater value.

For example, a young college grad earning $48,000, without student loan debt and unmarried, can sock away, say, half his money in an investment. If our young professional can put away $24,000 for a period of 40 years at, say, a rate of 7% a year, he’ll have something close to $400,000 awaiting him at the other end. After getting that retirement ball rolling and marrying, our couple (whose incomes are rising) may spend the next several years saving up for a home, minus funds they use to max out on workplace retirement plans. Once they save enough for a down payment and buy a house they should aggressively seek to pay off their mortgage, ahead of schedule if possible. A free-and-clear home serves as an “asset buffer” that can help absorb expenditure shocks, if emergencies arise.

Let’s say our young couple buy a home costing $250,000 and hold it for 35 years – they bought this a few years after first seeding their retirement accounts. If it appreciates at a 5% annual rate, the home is now worth almost $1.4 million. Of course, they paid mortgage interest and property taxes along the way; the point is simply that when they get to their 60s, they’ve got assets of several million dollars because they consistently made good trades. They traded present consumption for future consumption, and things of ephemeral value, like the things cash can buy in the present, for real estate and stocks of public companies.

This goes back to our discussion in chapter 2 regarding monitoring our consumption. Buying a coffee or going out to a restaurant is a leniency most people can afford to take. Doing so may be a valuable remedy for an overworked couple or the appropriate way to make a birthday celebration special. But infrequent indulgence becomes extravagance if it turns into a daily habit, preventing the frequent consumer from benefiting in the same way as our young couple who now have long-term holdings. The Rambam, by contrasting the temporary with the lasting, highlights that awareness of our long-term financial goals should be made part of our mundane daily lifestyle decisions.

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[1] Hilchot Deot 5:12.

[2] Hilchot Arachin VaCharamin 8:13 from Mishnah Arachin 8:4.

[3] Bava Metzia 75b.

Matching the importance of work as the crucible that tests our mettle is its role as the material basis of existence, the tool with which we earn our living. But people – Jews and non-Jews alike – grope in the darkness as they forge their financial lives. They know not how to go about it. Yet the Torah provides guidance on this topic.

Once again, it is the Rambam, the great codifier of Jewish law, who spells out for us the practical details of how to go about pursuing a livelihood, by resolving a logical order for major life milestones.[1] The halachah begins:

The way of the wise is to first establish for oneself an occupation to provide for himself, and afterwards he should acquire a residence, and afterwards he should marry a wife. As it is said:[2] “Who is the man who has planted a vineyard and not redeemed it? … Who is the man who has built a house and not dedicated it? … Who is the man who has betrothed a woman and not married her?”

The Rambam is saying that planting a vineyard, the field from whose produce he will sell wine, logically precedes the purchase of a home, which a man should in turn have the wherewithal to build as a qualification for marrying. The Rambam continues:

However, fools begin by marrying a woman, and then if he can afford it, he will buy a home, and then at the end of his days he will go about seeking a trade or support himself through charity. And so it says in the curses [the tochechah or the imprecations for neglecting the mitzvot]:[3] “You will betroth a woman…you will build a house…you will plant a vineyard.” That is to say, your deeds will be in reverse order so that you will not succeed in your pursuits. But as to blessing, it says:[4] “And David was successful [maskil] in all his ways and God was with him.”

The word maskil used in the final verse quoted has two meanings: successful, and intelligent. The ambiguous wording seems to be adduced as a subtle hint that success in affairs is dependent on an intelligent arrangement of them.

In short, this halachah states that there is a logical sequence in financially ordering one’s life, and it begins with earning a living and then builds up to other lifecycle milestones such as acquiring a home and marriage.

Each individual’s path will differ depending on his unique circumstances. In fact, a mishnah in Pirkei Avot – “the age of eighteen is for marriage, the age of twenty is for pursuing”[5] – may be interpreted as placing marriage prior to seeking a living. Maybe a certain career option is foreclosed by a quirk of geography, such as the young couple’s moving to a community where housing is affordable, but where a desired career path is less practicable. It is through such individual choices that people meet their destinies. Fortunately, when it may seem that every door is closed to you, experience shows that there’s always at least one that is indeed open and beckoning you forward.

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In the next installment, the Rambam offers what may be the most precise and concise statement of financial planning ever given.

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[1] Hilchot Deot 5:11.

[2] Devarim 20:5-7.

[3] Devarim 28:30.

[4] 1 Shemuel 18:14.

[5] Avot 5:23.