You can give your guilt complex a nap on this one. Marx wasn’t even a lapsed Jew. He was a lapsed Christian. His father converted to Christianity to advance his career. Young Karl disavowed all religions and would later rant against them, especially Judaism. In fact, he is better remembered as one of the world’s most accomplished anti-semites. His famous "On the Jewish Question" called for an end to the emancipation of the Jews because they were enslaved by a harsher taskmaster than the German state: their own religion. He referred to money as the real God of the Old Testament. And, probably not coincidentally, he was frequently in debt to Jewish moneylenders.

Therefore, Karl Marx only counts as a Jew on the slimmest of halachic opinions. And if there was an expulsion process for the Tribe, he would probably be first on the list. His hatred of Jews arose more from his own confusion about his heritage, and his inability to repay his debts, than from a legitimate concern for the human race.

This isn’t meant to be a "Who Is a Jew" exercise, though. Something more important is at stake. Right-wingers throughout the world often equate Marx’ supposed Judaism with a solid link between the religion and communism. There isn’t. Marx borrowed nothing from the Jewish tradition to formulate his ideals. In fact, the concept of social classes is very much woven throughout the Torah and Talmud. A rich man should be honored, it’s written, because he has received the blessing of wealth from God. A midrashic quotation even claims that God hasn’t performed any open miracles since the sojourn in the desert because he’s too busy being entertained by the rising and falling of human beings along the "ladders of wealth". Apparently the Forbes 400 is delivered up there.

Marx took his brand of ideology from the roiling cauldron of German intellectual thought of the mid Nineteenth Century. His only nod to Judaism was to denounce it. So the next time you’re at a party and a suburban socialist mentions how Marx was a progressive Jew, please correct that person. The God of the Torah wasn’t money, as Marx claimed, but He also most definitively was not a communist. And Karl Marx most certainly wasn’t Jewish.

Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, has spent the last week guest-blogging on Jewcy with fellow co-author Rabbi Levi Brackman. This is his parting post. Want more? Buy the book!

The post Was Karl Marx Really Jewish? appeared first on Jewcy.

I objected strongly. Call a spade a spade, I wailed. Two thousand years of European oppression fell heavily on my shoulders as I confronted the professor, causing the frat boys and cheerleaders in the back of the class to wake up and wipe the drool from their faces, entertained by the sudden dispute in the classroom.

These days, I’m not so sure that I would still try to argue with the prof about Shylock. He is a caricature (a particularly well-rounded one, I admit), but that’s part of what Shakespeare was getting at. Everyone else saw Jews as usurers and nothing else (in the same way that many of us mistakenly assume all lower-class Italian-Americans are mafiosi).

In fact, moneylending is a foreign practice for Jews. The Rabbis of the Talmudic period were so infuriated by the practice that they railed against it and decried it as one of the greatest sins. Later on, Rabbis would make dispensations that allowed some Jews to lend to non-Jews at usurious rates. But that was obviously a political move, and one that the religion should rightfully denounce as chauvinistic.

Jews dominated the moneylending business in the medieval Italian city-states because the Church gave some of them permission to ply the loan-sharking trade so that the moral stain of such practices wouldn’t touch good Christian souls. Jews had no other options because they were forbidden to enter the traditional tradesmen guilds.

All of this goes to show that there is no "natural inclination" towards banking in the Jewish genome. Nevertheless, there’s no disputing that the banking industry — and the dishonor roll of the key titans who have fallen in the last few months — still has an awful lot of Jews in it.

I think the answer to that puzzle lies in a book called Shylock’s Children by Derek Penslar. Amongst the many theories Penslar mentions in his excellent book is that modern capitalism required an ability to comprehend an artificial realm where numbers and math ruled, but where nothing real was actually changing hands. Jews, he claimed, already were born and inculcated with the concept of a homeland that didn’t really exist (until 1948) and a community whose bonds were all hypothetical. They fell naturally into the banking industry because they were much more comfortable with the kind of abstract thinking that came unnatural to their Christian colleagues, who found it difficult to separate the value of something from the thing itself.

In modern society, such thinking is commonplace for everyone. That should be a warning for us Jews. As the banking industry rebuilds itself from the bottom, there’s no guarantee that the "Jewish advantage" in banking will still be there when it comes time to compete for jobs.

Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy with fellow co-author Rabbi Levi Brackman. He’ll be here all week.

The post Re-examining The Taint of Jewish Money-Lending appeared first on Jewcy.

How can these people say such things? Because we let them. By not engaging in a free and honest debate about Jews and money, we are handing the discussion to our enemies on a silver platter. Instead of greeting them vigorously with facts and solidly-based opinions, we offer them silence. All too often, the rest of the world interprets that as agreement.

Nobody has offered me the podium at the U.N.’s General Assembly to reply to the Iranian president. But Jewcy has offered and encouraged me to respond. So here’s what I have to say:

Dear Mahmoud,

Yes, it is true that there are a lot of successful Jews on Wall Street. It’s also true that the Jews are disproportionately represented amongst scientists, academics, lawyers, artists and musicians. But that has nothing to do with our DNA or a secret group of our leaders pulling everyone else’s strings. The secret to our success was seeded in the desert four thousand years ago when Abraham taught us how to be entrepreneurial and later when Moses taught us the finer points of leadership skills. We honed it later in the streets of Europe when we were banished to the mercantile backwater of money-lending. And then it bloomed when we were given an equal footing in America. Whether or not we, as individuals, are religious doesn’t matter. The religion itself taught our forefathers the keys to success, positive thinking, how to recover from failure, and many other lessons. We’ve absorbed it by osmosis whether we, as individuals, are religious or not. We didn’t come to this success because we cheated. We were given tools by our tradition that gave us a smidgen of advantage. I’ll be glad to share them with you. If you buy my book.

Sincerely, Sam Jaffe

Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy with fellow co-author Rabbi Levi Brackman. He’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

Also see: Letters to Ahmadinejad

The post What My Book Can Teach Ahmadinejad About Jews and Wall Street appeared first on Jewcy.

I did what any God-petitioning Jew should have done in the first place: I picked up a copy of the Torah. Pretty soon, I had zeroed in on the story of Joseph (seven fat years, seven lean years) and was reminded of the name that the Pharaoh gave him after interpreting his dreams: Tzafnat Paneach. I chose the latter half of that name and Anglicized it to Panea. My company, Panea Energy Ltd., is in the field of energy storage, so the Egyptian meaning of the name ("storer of grain") made sense. My success also depends upon successfully anticipating the needs of the utilities industry, so I liked the fact that the name also had a mystical Hebrew connection: "Revealer of Hidden Things".

So Panea Energy was born. Now I not only had a name, but I had a story to tell whenever a potential client asked me what the name meant as they glanced at my business card.

I was advised by several people (all Jews) to not choose a “Jewish” name for my company. “They’ll think you’re a religious nut,” my brother told me, for instance.

I’m probably a nut, but nobody has ever accused me of being a religious one, so the suggestion caused surprise. The Bible, I argued, is as valid a source for a company name as the Iliad (Ajax, Midas, etc.) or tree identification books (Sycamore, Juniper, etc.).

As it turns out, my brother’s fears never materialized. I get lots of questions about Panea Energy’s name, but I’ve never gotten the feeling that someone discounted me or the company because of the religious source. In some cases, I’ve come across devout Christians who know the meaning of the name without my telling them and an instant bond is formed. In most other cases, I sense a recognition of my earnestness and gravitas on the part of the questioner as I tell the story of the name.

I’ve been thinking of the real Tzafnat Paneach a lot recently. If only he had been around in 2001 when George Bush took office. His advice (to store the surplus of the good years and dole out those savings in bad years) would have prevented the current crisis. Instead, we find our government doing the exact opposite: borrowing a few trillion dollars from the good years to come to pay off today’s debts. It’s just another example of a Biblical voice being lost amidst the happy whistling of leaders who were sure they were right.

Not everyone ignored Paneach’s advice. Vladimir Putin wrote his doctoral thesis prior to his KGB years on how Russia could save cash from years when oil prices are high (Russia gets most of its foreign reserves from fossil fuel sales) and then spend it in years that the price of oil falls. Thus the economy could be insulated from the peaks and valleys of petroleum pricing. As leader of his country, Putin put more than $190 billion into cash reserves. The Moscow stock exchange has crashed even harder than Wall Street, but the government can now swoop in with savings from years past (not more borrowed money like us) and prop up the economy in the hard times to come.

I’m not recommending a Putin-like leadership for our country. But Putin’s forethought—and his correct interpretation of a Biblical story—is going to serve Russia well. Every time we are reminded over the coming years of America’s declining power and Russia’s more prominent role in world affairs, think of Tzafnat Paneach. And hope that our economic leadership of the future is thinking of him too.

Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week. Stay tuned.

The post How the Torah Gave Me the Name for My Energy Business appeared first on Jewcy.

In the course of my reading, I’ve identified some surprising themes, which I’ll summarize here as the five myths of Jews and money. It’s a teaser: I’ll provide more depth and breadth to the assertions in the weeks ahead. But here are my big five:

*Jews developed the banking industry because they dominated the money-lending industry in the middle ages, thanks to a Church proscription against usury (something which didn’t apply to Jews).

*Jews are more successful in business than any other immigrant community in the United States in the last 100 years.

*The Jewish religious tradition views poverty as an emblem of piety.

*Karl Marx’s theories were based on traditional Jewish concepts of communal partnership and the sympathy for the victimhood of the lower class.

*The patriarchs of the Torah were penniless wanderers who lived from day to day on the kindness of others.

Anybody who has any thoughts, advice or suggestions for data sources on any of the above assertions, please drop me a note at samjaffe@gmail.com. Likewise, if you think of a more obvious candidate for a myth–something that is commonly accepted in popular culture but is in fact baseless in fact–please make a suggestion.

Cross-posted from Gates of Emporia, personal blog of Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success.  He’s also guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned.

The post The Five Myths of Jews and Money appeared first on Jewcy.

There’s one problem with all this Thirteenth Century "Dear Abby" correspondence. Maimonides never had a daughter named Kima. The two of them were discussing the presence of God in one’s life, and using the daughter-in-law analogy. In fact, if you look at the odd name of Kima, you’ll find the Hebrew root verb of K-Y-M, which means “to sustain.” Maimonides and ibn Aknin wer earguing over how best to let God into one’s life, but once He’s there, there was no argument over His effect on us: He sustains us.

All of this came home (literally) as my family was walkingout of Wal-Mart later that night. “Cool, look at that!,” my daughter shouted. There, practically shivering in the freezing Colorado rain, was a salamander, its tail in shreds from an unfortunate encounter with someone’s shopping cart. As daughters will do, mine convinced me to bring the salamander home and nurse it back to health. I wasn’t hopeful. The amphibian was barely moving and its tail looked like it had just stepped on a land mine.

The next morning, however, it was doing fine. Its wound was starting to heal and it was clearly recovering. I would later read that salamanders can lose parts of their spinal column and not only survive, but regenerate the entire missing part. Our little buddy was going to make it. That meant that it was time to name it. I didn’t hesitate. Kima is now happy sitting in its cage (I call it “it” because I have no idea how to determine the gender of a salamander; let me rephrase that: I have no desire to learn how to determine the gender of a salamander), eating bugs and swimming around in circles.

This is not the first time that I’ve consciously thought about bringing “K-Y-M” into my life. I’m in the process of launching a start-up in the renewable energy field. Every time I make progress in my goals for the business, I try to remember to say the “Shehechayanu” prayer, which thanks God for allowing us to arrive at a place towards which we have been striving, for sustaining us enough to be able to reach that place, and for instilling the fire of life in us that started the journey.

Now some people might consider saying a brucha over a business deal borders on the sacrilegious. I disagree strongly. I try to let God into every part of my life, not just while I’m davening. For heavens sake, He certainly does his best to nudge his way in everywhere else, from telling me what foods to eat to determining how I wash my hands to forbidding me from wearing leather shoes last Thursday. So why not bring Kima into my business life? That’s the place where I spend most of my waking moments, and it’s also the place where, aside from parenting, I hope to have the most lasting impact. It’s a place where Kima should be happy, eating bugs and swimming around in circles.

Sam Jaffe, co-author of Jewish Wisdom for Buisness Success, is guest-blogging on Jewcy, and he’ll be here all week.  Stay tuned. 

The post Bringing Kima into My Life appeared first on Jewcy.