MONEY
Money, money,
MONEY!
Despite what ABBA may have proclaimed,
it’s not a rich man’s world I BY RABBI STEPHEN BAARS
through with making ends meet.
The rich man’s worry has no respite. It
not only applies to his or her children, but
flows down to the grandchildren. On the
other hand, your worry about paying the
mortgage will one day end when (hopefully) you will make it.
A rich man once told me, “Anyone who
thinks wealth is easier than poverty, never had wealth.”
I don’t want you to think that Judaism
PHOTOGRAPHS: BIGSTOCKPHOTO.COM
CURTIS L CARLSON, FOUNDER OF THE GOLD BOND
Stamp Company and owner of the Radisson Hotel chain, had 150 000 employees
and $20 billion in annual revenue. He
said: “There’s nothing people like me worry about more; how do we keep our money from destroying our kids?”
It’s hard to appreciate this important
point if you don’t have that kind of
wealth, but this kind of worry is worse
than anything you might be going
aspires to asceticism – far from it. Money
is a blessing. But all blessings are burdened with risks that, without prior
knowledge, are as great a danger as they
are a blessing.
This knowledge is generally attained
through the process of earning your
wealth, and therefore there is a world of
difference between winning or inheriting
a fortune. The fruits of your own challenges and efforts to earn your keep will
(hopefully) one day be realised and you
will appreciate what you have achieved.
“If you don’t watch out, you can set up
a situation where a child never has the
pleasure of bringing home a paycheque,”
said T Boone Pickens Jr.
It’s with that understanding that we
can appreciate the following statement in
the Torah:
Moses shares with us one of the Jewish
50 JEWISH LIFE ■ ISSUE 83