We’re in the Money
by Eliezer Segal
The sages of the Talmud liked to muse about the ingenious wonders that manifest themselves in our world. Although the book of Genesis painted a sweeping picture of cosmological and biological origins, and even identified the inventors of crafts like instrumental music and metalwork, there were many additional intricacies of our world whose beginnings merited consideration. In the bold idiom of the rabbis such items were designated as matters “that God thought of creating—but even if they had not arisen in his thoughts, reason dictates that he should have thought of them”!
Rashi explained that the Talmud was referring to things that are essential for the survival of the human species. Thus, the list included our emotional ability to get on with our lives after intense mourning; or the way that most edible produce is perishable, in order to preclude the abuses of monopolistic hoarding. Evidently the Almighty programmed those features into the creation so that they could kick in at a later stage, when human society reached a state for which they would become advantageous.
To that list of wondrous phenomena one opinion in the Talmud added the institution of coinage—or, as Rashi understood it, the fact that money is accepted as currency.
Rabbi Samuel Edels (“Maharsha”) felt that this economic convention was too prosaic to be juxtaposed with more impressive phenomena that attest to active divine tampering with the laws of nature or the human psyche. He therefore remarked that the talmudic text requires further inquiry. In the end he suggested that there must indeed be something truly miraculous in the universal consensus that is a prerequisite for the acceptance of money as the means of exchange for commercial transactions.
In a similar spirit, Rabbi Joseph Ḥayyim of Baghdad, the “Ben Ish Ḥai,” provided a thorough description of the unlikely constellation of political and social conditions that are necessary for the introduction of a money-based economy. This is most apparent, he argued, when we observe how the populace recognizes the government’s authority to mint and distribute coins whose intrinsic worth (as defined by the price of the metals from which they are fashioned) has no correlation with their official face value. Although everyone is aware of this discrepancy, people nevertheless accept the currency at its official value by virtue of its being the legal coin of the realm.
Rabbi Joseph Ḥayyim applied the same rule to paper currency, where the government distributes a piece of paper instead of a gold coin; and he concluded that it must be by divine agency that society has accepted these improbable conventions.
Now, the Ben Ish Ḥai’s analysis dovetails well with the norms of commerce that were in force in his own generation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the era of the Talmud, however, the metallic content of coins was considered crucial to their functionality. It was a fact of commercial life in antiquity that, aside from the natural process of erosion and deterioration, people were wont to shave off and recycle imperceptible amounts of silver or gold, which would eventually lead to those debased coins being rejected as payment and removed from circulation. When the government itself started minting devalued currency, it raised serious questions about the strength of the economy.
The Talmud discusses in considerable detail the legal status of eroded coins, raising such questions as: how far they must be worn down before one may refuse to accept them or must remove them from circulation; and what are appropriate uses to which such coins may be put without fearing that somebody might try to spend them.
It is perhaps indicative of the practices in his society that the Babylonian sage Rav Pappa criticized those who are overly scrupulous about the integrity of coins, accepting only those that are in pristine mint condition. Such persons should be censured as “wicked souls.”
It would appear, at any rate, that when the Talmud ascribed celestial guidance to the creation of a money-based commercial system, it had in mind something closer to the Maharsha’s interpretation than to the Ben Ish Ḥai’s—that there is something miraculous when an entire society agrees to ascribe value to an arbitrary-seeming means of exchange that does not seem to have any inherent usefulness.
The use of coins is taken for granted in the Torah. They are required for the fulfilment of several religious precepts, such as those involved in the “redemption” of sacred items—a process that usually consisted of the transfer of the sanctity from its original bearer (such as tithes or first-borns) to the coin.
Historians generally date the introduction of coin-based commerce at around 700 B.C.E. in Greece. According to the scriptural narrative, the earliest mention of a monetary transaction might be when Abraham purchased the cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite as a burial site for his wife Sarah for “four hundred shekels of silver.” However, if we look carefully at the wording of the text, we see that the patriarch “weighed out for him” (vayyishḳol) the price of the field. Notwithstanding its familiar use as the name of a coin (as in modern Israel), the term “shekel” originally designated a measure of weight and not the denomination of a coin.
Nonetheless, Rabbi Ḥalabo expounded God’s blessing to Abraham “I will make thy name great” in the sense of “his coinage [using the Roman term “moneta”] will be widespread in the world”; and proceeds to describe the images engraved on Abraham’s coins, as well as those of Joshua, David and Mordecai.
A rabbinic tradition assigned Abraham’s grandson Jacob a role in the origination of coinage. The Torah recounts that he paid a visit to the town of Shechem where he “encamped before the city.” The Hebrew word rendered as “encamped” (vayyiḥan) is similar to a root meaning “favour” or “benefit,” which inspired rabbinic homilists to infer that Jacob was a generous benefactor to the town. The third-century Babylonian teacher Rav explained that the novel benefit that he bestowed upon the citizens of Shechem was the introduction of coins.
Rabbi Ezekiel Landau considered it implausible that a civilized town could ever have functioned without a monetary system. He therefore preferred to interpret Jacob’s contribution in a narrower sense: his innovation did not consist of introducing the Shechemites to a completely new medium of exchange; rather, what he did was alter the coins’ physical form. Hitherto the citizens had made their purchases with square coins—until Jacob came and replaced them with round discs.
According to Rabbi Landau the virtue of this new shape lay in its moral symbolism. A square evokes notions of solidity and permanence, stimulating the wealthy to place their exclusive trust in material affluence, and hence to indulge in arrogant smugness.
A circle, on the other hand, is an apt image for the vicissitudes of existence, as human fortunes are subject to unpredictable cycles of financial booms and busts. People whose change-purses are constantly reminding them of the vulnerability of their present affluence will hopefully learn not to place excessive reliance on their material acquisitions; and as a result, they will be less likely to exhibit overbearing pride.
As an additional perk, Rabbi Landau observes that the resulting humility will promote divine favour which will in turn help to safeguard their prosperity—as indeed was the case for Jacob.
All this leads me to wonder whether the perceptible decline in ethical decline in recent times might be linked to our shift from round metal coins to paper, e-cash and bitcoin.
- First Publication:
- The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, January 30, 2020, as “A Just Measure.”
- First Publication:
- The Alberta Jewish News, Edmonton and Calgary, January 30, 2020, as “A Just Measure.”
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