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date: 02 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter discusses the Jewish approach to business ethics. It first identifies several fundamental principles of Jewish business ethics, and then applies them to several common issues in business ethics: fraud, anti-competitive behaviour, theft (including theft of intellectual property), deception, kick-backs, and contract negotiation and interpretation. Next, the chapter discusses a number of concrete examples where Jewish sources have much to tell us about how to conduct business morally. It is shown that the Jewish approach to business ethics does not impose one-sided support for any particular group (employers vs. employees, individuals vs. society), but rather is an attempt to find a nuanced balance between competing interests so that the final conclusion represents a solution recognized as just.

Keywords: Jewish business ethics, Jews, Judaism, fraud, anti-competitive behaviour, theft, deception, kick-backs, contract negotiation

Barry J. Leff

Barry J. Leff is a business executive and rabbi. He is the General Manager for Innodata Isogen Israel, Ltd., an outsourcing company. He also serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Rabbis for Human Rights, and he serves on the Board of Trustees (and is chair of the audit committee) of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem. He holds a Doctorate of Business Administration and an M.B.A. from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, and he was ordained as a rabbi and awarded an M.A. in Rabbinic Studies from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. He has over twenty-five years’ experience as an entrepreneur and executive and has served as a congregational rabbi in Tucson, Arizona, Vancouver, BC, and Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of a chapter on relations between co-workers in the The Observant Life. He has written three teshuvot (Jewish legal opinions) that have been approved by the Conservative Movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, two of which deal with issues of business ethics. He is a regular op-ed contributor to the Jerusalem Post, and he blogs on Israel and Judaism at www.neshamah.net.

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