The Upside-Down World
We live in an upside-down world. With today's twisted moral standards, those who were kind enough to loan the money...
Part 2 – The Upside-Down World
No Excuses!
Financial problems and debt have been around since the beginning of time. But, the phenomenon of people “conveniently forgetting” to repay their debts is a nuance of modern times.
Many people who owe money make little effort to return their debts. They are living a lie, acting as if they don’t owe anything to anyone. Some even have the nerve to think that the borrowed money is theirs and that they can do with it as they wish, while regarding the person who lent them the money as an inconsiderate villain that constantly hounds them! They actually bear gross ingratitude towards the person who so graciously lent them the money, with complaints like, “Why doesn’t he leave me alone already?” or “Why can’t he understand my predicament?”
We live in a upside-down world. With today’s twisted moral standards, those who were kind enough to loan the money are the ones who feel uncomfortable. They have to search for all kinds of ways and ploys to recover their own money from those who borrowed it. As opposed to yesteryear, today’s lender is the slave while the borrower is the master. In any normal society – that with even minimal moral standards – the borrower is indebted and subservient to the lender until such time as the loan is repaid in full. When the lender is an underdog, so are morality and decency.
The “Four-Lands Council” Ordinance
To understand the severity of failing to repay a loan, let’s take a look at a rabbinical ordinance issued by Europe’s leading rabbis of the “Four Lands Council” over 400 years ago, which included the holy Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer HaLevi Ideles, the renown “Maharsha”.
The ordinance in brief includes three main points:
1. If the Rabbinical Court Judges find out that a person who is delinquent in repaying a debt is not working around the clock to repay that debt, yet comes up with all sorts of excuses as to why he does not have the wherewithal to pay his debt, then, as a first step, he is banned from the synagogue! He is not allowed to step foot in the community’s synagogue until he repays his debt.
2. If, after being banned from the synagogue, the debtor still fails to repay his debt, then his wife is banned from the women’s section of the synagogue. She is not allowed to enter the women’s section (or any other section of the synagogue for that matter) until her husband repays his debt.
3. If the above measures do not convince the debtor to pay his debts, his children are expelled from school!
Since today, because of eroding moral standards, we don’t fully understand the gravity of not repaying a loan, many of us might view the above three edicts as being cruel and vengeful. But, the wise rabbis of previous generations knew exactly what they were doing. They had a thorough understanding of the scope of man’s evil inclination and of how it tries to shirk responsibility and legitimize delinquent behavior such as failing to repay debts. Our wise Rabbis enacted the above ordinance as a deterrent measure to force people to do what’s necessary in order to repay debts before being publicly humiliated and expelled from the synagogue. A delinquent’s wife was included in the ordinance so that she would pressure her husband to repay the loans before she and her children were also publicly humiliated.
Despite today’s mixed-up notion where a lender seems to be disadvantaged, Jewish law holds a borrower subservient to the lender. This concept is anchored in the Code of Jewish Law (see Shulchan Aruch Choshen Mishpat, section 107) and in the Gemarra, which is full of similar rabbinical ordinances.
In all these ordinances we see the same basic concept: the borrower is fully responsible to return the money, and must take every required step to fulfill the conditions of the loan. Refusing to repay a loan is so severe that our rabbis decreed that a delinquent borrower should be lashed in the rabbinical court until he agrees to return the money he borrowed.
Halacha – Jewish law – concludes that the borrower is indebted to the lender, for our sages said explicitly, “A borrower is enslaved to the lender.” The borrower who does not have the means to repay his debt is similar to slave, because he must work around the clock to do whatever is necessary to return the money he owes.
Unfortunately, in our upside down world, the lender becomes like a slave, running day and night after the borrower trying to salvage what is rightfully his.
To be continued.
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