There are rich Jews and poor Jews, and a whole lot of them seesawing in between. There are doctors and tech entrepreneurs commanding high salaries, while the street-corner flower vendors and supermarket cashiers earn considerably less. How can one claim that wealth is open to all comers?

First of all, while it is natural to think that one’s profession is determinative of one’s wealth, our oral tradition rejects this view. Rabbi Meir teaches explicitly that one’s profession is not determinative:

For there is no profession in which there is not poverty and wealth, for poverty does not come from the profession, nor does wealth come from the profession. Rather, it all comes from one’s merit.

Kiddushin 4:14

With enough life experience, one sees that there are physicians who struggle financially and couriers who prosper. But even if we embrace Rabbi Meir’s teaching, there is room to despair that we personally lack merit, or to quibble that many among the meritless appear to be quite well-to-do.

That being the case, how do we acquire merit? Rabbi Meir, in the same Mishnah, says a person should “pray to Him to Whom wealth and property belong.” Prayer is the correct starting place, as the Talmud[1] teaches us that God created vegetation on the third day of creation, but it did not sprout from the earth until the first motzaei Shabbat [Saturday night, after the conclusion of the Sabbath] when Adam realized the importance of rain, prayed for it and God had mercy and let the rain fall. We learn from this that God desires prayer.

And yet prayer is a necessary but not sufficient condition for our material success, as the Talmud teaches:

“What should a person do to become wealthy?” He said to them, “He should increase his merchandise and conduct business faithfully.” They said to him, “Many have done so and weren’t successful!” “Rather a person should request mercy from Him to Whom wealth belongs, as it is written,[2] ‘Mine is the silver and Mine is the gold.’” What does this come to teach? That one [commerce] without the other [prayer] is insufficient.

Niddah 70b

Our Torah sources have thus far established two principles that are essential for financial success: First, that we know that God is the source of wealth and it is to Him that we must turn to seek our sustenance, and second that we must make efforts of our own. These are core tenets of our emunah, and easy to accept. But…can the flower vendor really expect to become wealthy? In other words, does the ability to become wealthy really apply to everyone?

The answer is yes. The Rambam actually makes the process of wealth accumulation a part of his vast halachic code, the Mishneh Torah. Specifically, in the last four halachot of the fifth chapter of Hilchot Deot, the Rambam lays out the principles of financial planning. Addressing himself to the wise, as we are all meant to be, the Rambam writes:

 A talmid chacham [Torah scholar] should manage his finances judiciously. He should eat, drink and sustain his household according to his means and economic success. And he should not expend excessively.

This is what common folk wisdom calls “living within your means.” But wisdom is no longer so common. Calvin Coolidge, in his 1929 autobiography, praised this virtue, and embodied it. As president, he kept a lid on spending, and retired about a fourth of the federal debt. Today, U.S. federal spending and debt have reached epidemic proportions.

But governmental debt, important though that be, is not our topic. Our concern is at the individual household level, and there the data are not any more encouraging. According to Debt.org, the U.S. median household income reached just under $80,000 in the first quarter of 2021. To many observers, especially from less affluent countries, that would seem like “success.” Yet given an average U.S. household debt of $145,000, Americans on average have failed the Rambam’s first test of financial prudence. Indeed, the fiscal path of most people in “advanced” Western societies today is unsustainable.

Therein lies the significance of this educational undertaking, as we are all profoundly influenced by our surroundings. The Rambam himself stresses this point with the opening words of his next chapter: “A person’s nature is such that he is drawn in his habitual behaviors and deeds after his friends and companions and conducts himself according to the custom of the people of his city.”[3] No wonder that those living in such company might be tempted to take on similar habits.

The Rambam “fleshes out” the idea of living within one’s means by discussing the eating of meat, which in his time was relatively expensive:

The Sages commanded as proper conduct, that a person only eat meat with an appetite, as it is said, “When your soul craves meat.”[4] It is sufficient for a healthy person to eat meat weekly. But if he is rich enough to eat meat daily, he may eat.

The idea here is for wise people to desist from consuming expensive fare unthinkingly. When you really want to eat meat, you should do so. A Jew certainly has reason to eat meat at his Shabbat or holiday seudah, for instance. But to do so too frequently is not necessary to sustain your health and may cripple your finances.

In our own day, food is more affordable, but the principle applies all the same. It is commonplace for people to pick up a coffee before starting their day at the office. A venti cappuccino at Starbucks costs $5.45 in New York City and only 50 cents less in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. There exists a whole financial planning literature on whether a daily purchased coffee habit bleeds one’s future retirement security. One popular columnist equated this habit over the course of a career with the loss of $1 million in retirement savings, adding she would never waste such money even though she could afford it; soberer calculations arrived at a loss of $150,000 in compounded investment returns over 40 years. But the Rambam has settled this debate: The average person should not indulge in extravagances, but someone who can afford to do so, may do so.

The Rambam concludes this halachah with the proper mindset a wise head of household should adopt:

The Sages commanded and said a person should always eat less than what befits his station, dress as befits his station and provide for his wife and children beyond what befits his station.

In our times, this sounds gallant, perhaps quaint. But the purpose of Hilchot Deot is to establish a framework of character traits that will enable a successful, contented life. The Rambam achieves that goal by stressing here, that one should not overly focus on himself. While he can achieve this goal through underconsumption, doing so should not come at the expense of his dignity, which is why his clothing expenses should fully match his capabilities. But supporting his wife and children is part of a Jewish man’s core mission in life, and should be guided by a spirit of graciousness.

We will examine the Rambam’s further advice in the coming chapters, as we lay our foundation for financial success. For now, the key takeaway – the cornerstone of our foundational financial structure – is that wealth building is not only possible at any income level but actually dictated by that level. We must start by living within our means, fueled by a concern for those who are financially dependent on us. The reward for such a lifestyle approach, as we shall come to see, is genuine contentment, and eventually, financial independence.

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[1] Chullin 60b, cited in Rashi, Bereishit 2:5.

[2] Chaggai 2:8.

[3] Deot 6:1.

[4] Devarim 12:20.

While most people dream of riches, not poverty, there is also an understanding that excessive love of money can lead to disastrous results. Giving up those dreams for a life of poverty, however, is not necessarily such a noble sacrifice, as it has its own corresponding challenges: the Talmud says that poverty causes us to violate our own and our Creator’s will.[1] As King Shlomoh expresses the idea succinctly:

Distance falsity and deceitful words from me, give me neither poverty nor wealth; allot me my daily bread: lest I become sated and deny and say “Who is Hashem?” or lest I become poor and steal and take hold of the name of my God.

Mishlei 30:8-9

Not only is the rich person more wont to rebel against God, but so is the poor person liable to be forced by necessity into theft and false oath. As the Ramchal depicts the situation: with poverty on one side and wealth on the other, serenity on one side and suffering on the other, the battle rages against a person to the fore and to the rear.[2]

For this reason it is all the more necessary to have guidance in charting one’s financial life rather than forging ahead blindly without taking heed of consequences.

Both rich and poor Jews have been held up as standards for their respective classes, showing that both paths can be navigated successfully.

Hillel used half of his meager wages to gain admission to the house of study and the other half to support his family. When he failed to find work one day and was denied entry to the beit midrash by its guard, he climbed the roof to hear the sages Shemayah and Avtalyon expound on the Torah. It was a wintry day in the month of Tevet (December-January) and he was buried under three amot of snow when his teachers rescued him, after noticing a shadowy figure clouding their skylight. Our Sages teach that his example of self-sacrifice would condemn any Jew who uses poverty as an excuse for not having studied Torah.

In like manner, the Sages also adduce the example of Rabbi Elazar ben Charsom, who is said to have inherited a thousand towns and a thousand ships, but spent all his days with minimal provisions learning Torah. Once, his servants found him and forced him to labor, invoking their master’s name – his own. He was so occupied with learning Torah that his servants had never seen him. His devotion to Torah condemns anyone who uses his wealth as an excuse for not studying.[3]

Although the Jewish people has had its great rich people and poor people, the guidance the Torah offers is towards financial success. But it takes effort. The Talmud was cognizant of the “cycle of poverty,” stating that “poverty pursues the poor person.”[4] It’s easier for the wealthy to maintain their wealth and harder for the poor to get ahead. But wealth can also prove elusive to the wealthy. Changes in fortune are also a cycle, and poverty is sure to come upon every family eventually.[5] ​

Extricating oneself from poverty requires, essentially, remaking oneself. That means stepping outside of our comfort zones to become somebody we’ve never been. And in the same measure that the poor will want to increase their wealth, the wealthy will want to secure theirs – both firmly on the basis of the Torah’s guidance.​ The name for this process is called personal growth, and it is possible to posit a relationship between personal growth and portfolio growth, in that both require effort and risk.

More than even the specific merchandise, property or investments we acquire, it is the difficult work of self-denial in the form of siphoning off income into savings that gets us to our goals. For most people, this is not a comfortable process. What’s more, to climb higher, we need to take the risk of falling. The Torah’s guidance on how to grow, and get ahead, financially, requires a journey in personal self-development that is the subject of the remaining chapters of this book.

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[1] Eruvin 41b.

[2] Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, Mesillat Yesharim, chapter 1 (available in English as The Path of the Just, trans. Shraga Silverstein, Feldheim Publishers, 1990).

[3] Yoma 35b.

[4] Bava Kamma 92a.

[5] Shabbat 151b.

Along with Shabbat and holidays, kashrut, human relationships and education, our finances are a very large dimension of our lives as Jews, and yet all too often we are confused about how to advance our lives as the Torah would like us to. As children we receive gifts, save and spend money, give tzedakah and hope for financial prosperity when we grow up, but upon growing up we do not automatically know what we are supposed to be doing to climb the ladder of success.

Yet our Torah resolutely presents the achievement of wealth and worldly success as compatible, and even concurrent, with the realization of the true wealth of a life of Torah and mitzvot. We need to get our financial affairs right to lead a successful life of service to God. But the desired balance in our monetary pursuits is far from the Western materialistic view of endless consumption and accumulation. The Jewish concept of wealth is founded on modesty and restraint, as we learn in Pirkei Avot – “Who is wealthy? He who is satisfied with his lot.”[1]

And yet the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs were more than just comfortable – they were fabulously wealthy. The Torah describes our righteous forefather Avraham as loaded, literally: “And Avram was very heavy with livestock, silver and gold.”[2] As always, our Sages elaborate, seeing clues to Avraham’s great wealth in other passages. Avraham’s nephew Lot benefited from staying with his uncle, becoming wealthy like him. No one who had any commerce with Avraham was not blessed from it.  The midrash even notes that the international reserve currency of that era was minted on the basis of Avraham’s wealth.[3]

Avraham’s son Yitzchak was also singularly wealthy. Most people would be very happy with a 10% yearly return on their portfolios. To double their wealth would be a dream come true. To triple it would be unheard of. Yet the return on Yitzchak’s agricultural labor shows that Hashem’s blessing is outside the natural order – a hundredfold profit.[4] As with Avraham, our Sages connect God’s blessing with the beneficiary’s righteousness. Yitzchak counted the yield on his crop in order to accurately tithe his produce.[5]

Yitzchak’s son Ya’akov was initially very poor. His father-in-law Lavan serially cheated him out of his wages. Yet Hashem took note of this and made him very, very rich from that work.[6]

These were our forefathers, and this is our inheritance to claim. Jews and wealth – which is nothing other than the blessing Hashem wishes to bestow on His people – can go together. Hashem also desires to bring blessing on the nations of the world – but through the Jewish people. As He told Avraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you, and through you will all the families of the earth be blessed.”[7]

And indeed we saw a shining example of just that in our first exile, in the first generation after the Patriarchs. Ya’akov’s son Yosef, whom Pharaoh appointed viceroy over Egypt, was Hashem’s agent to bring prosperity to what was then the world’s superpower, saving the country from economic collapse. Yosef gathered all the gold and silver of Egypt and Canaan,[8] and indeed, as our Sages note, of the whole world.[9]

Despite the blessing Yosef and the Jewish people brought to Egypt, the Egyptian people betrayed him and enslaved us. The harshness and degradation of Egyptian bondage was so severe that we remember it daily, and particularly on Pesach, where we recount how Hashem brought ten plagues on Egypt and brought us to the Land of Israel. The economic aspect of this deliverance was that the Egyptian economy was wrecked, whereas the Jewish people “emptied out Egypt,”[10] leaving with great wealth, compensation for their servitude in fulfilment of God’s promise to Avraham that “they will go forth with great possessions.”[11]

No less a personage than Mosheh Rabbeinu, the greatest prophet who ever lived, also possessed fabulous wealth. While the other Jews collected the spoils of Egypt, Mosheh occupied himself with locating Yosef’s remains, preferring to fulfill the promise to carry his bones out of Egypt rather than to amass riches like his compatriots. But Hashem did not overlook His faithful servant and endowed him with the shards of sapphire left over from the tablets that he carved.[12] Indeed, all of the prophets of Israel were wealthy,[13] which is to say that holiness and being learned in Torah are not incompatible with great wealth.

These are but a few of the countless examples found in our holy sources that together paint a picture of Jewish wealth as the norm, if not even the ideal. Anyone who has learned Seder Nashim (the third of six orders of Mishnah), which more than the others depicts family life, cannot escape the image of the Jewish household as busy with farms, wine and olive presses, property and productive assets and funds for all sorts of lifecycle contingencies.

There of course were many Jews in the Bible whose wealth, if they possessed it, went unremarked. But when we can say that the patriarchs, matriarchs and Mosheh Rabbeinu, plus the entire generation that left Egypt, were all rich, it seems fair to invoke the dictum ma’asei avot siman labanim (“the deeds of the forefathers are a sign for the children”). Jews are supposed to be wealthy, and to make others wealthy, and our shortcomings with regard to this ideal are the result of our many sins, the length of the present exile and the consequent weakening of our connection to our tradition.

The Torah states: “For there will never cease to be needy within the land.”[14] However, just a few verses earlier, we learned the opposite: “But there will be no needy among you.”[15] Rashi explains: when you perform God’s will there will be needy among others and not among you, but when you do not perform God’s will there will be needy among you. Wealth is the ideal, and poverty is connected with our moral failings.

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[1] Avot 3:1.

[2] Bereishit 13:2.

[3] Bereishit Rabbah 39:11.

[4] Bereishit 26:12.

[5] Bereishit Rabbah 64:6.

[6] Bereishit 30:43.

[7] Bereishit 12:3.

[8] Bereishit 47:14.

[9] Pesachim 119a from Bereishit 41:57.

[10] Shemot 12:36.

[11] Bereishit 15:14.

[12] Nedarim 38a.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Devarim 15:11.

[15] Devarim 15:4, and Rashi’s comment there.

Society’s gaping void in financial literacy is well known. There are already government-mandated programs across the globe to address this deficiency. Even still, a number of academic reviews of such programs have found them ineffective in meaningfully improving financial decision-making. This may reflect the limitations of teaching against the values and institutions of societies that are broadly unsupportive of financial responsibility. Indeed, as a veteran financial journalist, my observation is that even industry professionals lack a clear understanding of finance; they may possess a lot of technical knowledge, but all too frequently lack an awareness of how finance connects to life.

As an Orthodox Jew, I look to what our Talmudic Sages have had to say about financial life, and I find that here too, even the community of observant Jews lack a comprehensive view of the Torah’s values as they relate to our personal finances. I have not found a single book that puts together these teachings on matters of personal finance, despite the great need for Jewish households to organize their finances in a manner conducive to their unique lifestyle needs.

Seeing this void, my son Ariel and I joined forces to create a book (serialized here) that relates the Torah’s view of wealth, its logical approach to financial planning, along with advice on how to go about earning a living, invest for the future, manage risk and plan retirement. We have decided to make this resource available on this site for the benefit of the public, and as an example of the kind of writing and research we do for our clients.

Gil Weinreich

Read installments of the book to the right!

Praise for “A Torah Guide to Personal Finance”

“A Torah Guide to Personal Finance accesses the wisdom of the Talmud and the Rambam to help us make intelligent lifestyle decisions and overcome the obstacles blocking the achievement of true Torah wealth.” – Rabbi Jonathan Rietti, co-founder of Breakthrough Chinuch and author of The One Minute Masmid.