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Money is on many people’s minds at the moment. I know it is on my mind. We watch the financial crisis unfolding on TV or the internet like a slow motion train wreck. Sovereign debt crisis. Quantitive easing. Credit default swaps. Fiat currency collapse. Inflation-deflation. Moral hazard. Record gold prices.
It was much simpler in the old days (when I was a kid): you worked for money, then you spent it. Sometimes you even saved it to spend later. I agree with Paul Volcker: the last good innovation from the financial industry was the automatic teller machine. I also agree with Teddy Roosevelt:
Americanism means the virtues of courage, honour, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price ... the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
The one good thing coming out of this whole international financial quagmire is that the collective consciousness is being raised about money and morals and the responsible government necessary to achieve financial health.
You can’t expect a viable economy if the only object of government policy is to be re-elected every four years. Sir Arnold Weinstock
We need to go back to basics. When you are exhausted you still have the strength to be simple.
Here are some Yiddish proverbs passed down the generations. They were valid back then, they are valid today but nobody thinks of them.
Golden dreams make men wake hungry.
Interest on debts grows without rain.
Money buys everything but good sense.
If you have nothing to lose, you can try anything.
Once poor, never rich.
Money doesn't grow on trees.
Money is round, so it rolls away.
If I dealt in candles, the sun wouldn't set; if I dealt in shrouds, people would stop dying.
Charge nothing and you'll get a lot of customers.
Every seller praises his wares.
Life is the cheapest bargain - you get it for nothing.
What you save is, later, like something found.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
A penny is sometimes better spent than spared.
A penny is a lot of money - if you haven't got a penny.
The heaviest thing in the world is an empty pocket.
He that cannot pay, let him pray.
A heavy purse makes a light heart.
A golden key will open every lock.
It costs money to sin. A trade makes you a king, but robs you of your leisure.
Gold's father is dirt, yet it regards itself as noble.
Golden dishes will never turn black.
Better an ounce of luck than a pound of gold.
When luck joins in the game, cleverness scores double.
A rich man who is stingy is the worst pauper.
A rich man's foolish sayings pass for wise ones.
With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well too.
If the rich could hire someone to die for them, the poor would make a wonderful living.
The truly rich are those who enjoy what they have.
Happy poverty overcomes everything.
He who comes for the inheritance is often made to pay for the funeral.
When the father gives to his son, both laugh; when the son gives to his father, both cry.
Image from Wikipedia: silver shekel minted in Jerusalem in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome in 68 C.E.
2h30 in the morning and I cannot sleep. I think of a wrong that has been done to me recently and anger wells up in me like a flood against the person responsible. I cannot reign in that rolling chariot of anger and sometimes I think that I don’t even want to. And for what? Words.
This afternoon, to take my mind off the anger, I sorted through some Yiddish proverbs that I have been planning to post on the blog. Regular readers will know that I often post quotations on the blog and in my travels I have come across a few Yiddish proverbs. I always found them very pithy, down to earth and jolting in their ability to make you see the truth. I discovered more reading Life’s Daily Blessings by Rabbi Kerry M. Orlitzky. This one for example:
If I would be like someone else, who would be like me?
I wish I had found that one when I was 15 years old and searching for my identity.
So this afternoon, as I sorted through my Yiddish proverbs, I began to think of the people who made these proverbs: all the generations of Jews who repeated these phrases to themselves and to their children so often that they became part of the Yiddish psyche. And I began to think how small my anger was. When compared to the possibilities of wrongs that one person can do to another, the wrong I had suffered was small. ‘Fleas are not lobsters.’ If you cannot sleep because of a few miserable words, what would you have done if you had lived through the Second World War for example, where wrongs done were counted in loved ones taken, imprisoned, killed?
I saw in these Yiddish proverbs, that wrongs have always been and will always be and that my wrongs are not something out of the ordinary at all. Every proverb is a witness of the experiences and wisdom of many people in times gone by. It took away some of the sting.
But still I won’t rest well until ‘the wheel turns round’ and truth comes out.
The entire world rests on the tip of the tongue.
Truth never dies, but lives a wretched life.
Truth is the safest lie.
When the light is crooked, the shadow is crooked.
Half an answer also says something.
A half-truth is a whole lie.
A word is like an arrow - both are in a hurry to strike.
A slap heals but a harsh word is remembered.
In my last post I Ching – nourishing the superior we talked about nourishing the body and the mind as extolled by the I Ching in two related hexagrams. So I was not at all surprised when I read the following paragraph from Rabbi Orlitzky’s Life’s Daily Blessings:
Savoring food
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe, at whose word all things come into being. General blessing for food
This is the blessing to be used “when in doubt”, or when food doesn’t fit into any category of traditional foods. It recognizes God as the source of all. While we usually think of prayer or ritual – or even the study of sacred texts – as vehicles to be used to bring us into relationship with the Divine, this blessing clearly demonstrates how food can bring us closer to God. Just by uttering this simple phrase, we acknowledge God’s role in the world and in our lives.
Everything we receive in this world is a gift. Even our bodies. Even the air we breathe. Someone said everything we receive in this world comes from other people. That is mostly true, but other people come from God, so even their gifts originate in God. We rarely stop to think about this, so saying ritual blessings for what we receive, as in the Jewish tradition, seems to me a good way to remind ourselves to be grateful.
Rabbi Orlitzky goes on (italics mine):
So if you are about to eat something, especially if you are not sure which blessing might apply or you are not sure of the nature of the food you are about to eat (for example, did it come from a tree or grow on the ground?), don’t rush through the blessing in order to get to the food. Savor its words, just as you might the food you are about to eat. Both have the potential to nourish and sustain you.
So here again we have the advice we encountered in the I Ching : our task is to nourish the body and the mind and to savor both without seeking to rush things. This is how to have the right attitude in life and the right relationship to the Divine. The rain will fall when it is ready, and when it does, we too will be ready.
There is heaven and there is earth. In between: man. There is the perfection of God (the Tao, the Divine) and there is the imperfection of animals that live instinctively but cannot reason. In between, neither animal nor God but close to both: man. Man has one foot on earth, one foot in heaven. One foot in the visible, material world, one foot in the invisible, spiritual world. He can be lower than the stupidest animal or he can be a living saint. Sometimes in the same day. What a spectrum of possibilities exist for man! That is why it is said that God exists inside of us, in the breast of every man (or woman). God exists in everything, surely, but only in man does he share his divine qualities and powers. Only man can embody God’s will and act for God on earth. Only he can help God finish the world. Only he can help God be God. But God leaves the choice up to him…
Helping God finish the world
Without human participation, God remains incomplete, unrealized. It is up to us to actualize the divine potential in the world. God needs us. Rabbi Daniel Matt
Rabbi Matt’s conclusion is rather startling. We usually think of God as in need of nothing. That is what is so appealing about Rabbi Matt’s mystical notion. Not only is the world unfinished without our partnership, even the divine self is incomplete without us. That is quite a responsibility for us as humans. We have to complete the creation of the world, and we have to complete God. The latter is accomplished by making sure that the divine potential, which already exists in the world, is fully realized. And this can only happen when we are prepared to act accordingly. These are acts of kindness and goodness to those around us, those whom we know and love, and those whom we don’t know and don’t love. Begin your day with blessing. Then make sure that all that you do in the hours that follow reflects what you have just uttered.
From Life’s Daily Blessings, by Rabbi Kerry M. Orlitzky
