Candida [to her husband, the Reverend James Mavor Morell]:“Look at our congregation at St. Dominic's! Why do they come to hear you talking about Christianity every Sunday? Why, just because they've been so full of business and money-making for six days that they want to forget all about it and have a rest on the seventh, so that they can go back fresh and make money harder than ever!” George Bernard Shaw, Candida (Act II)
*
Hershey
H. Friedman retells the following story from the Talmud:
One day, while Rabbi Safra was praying, a man offered to buy some merchandise from him. He made an offer, but Rabbi Safra did not want to respond in the middle of a prayer. The prospective buyer assumed that Rabbi Safra was holding out for more and kept increasing the bid. After Rabbi Safra concluded his prayer, he informed the buyer that he would sell the merchandise at the first price because he had "agreed in his heart" to this price.*
***
Charlie
Kushner as a businessman was no
Rabbi Safra. While the Rabbi would adhere to the lower price that he
had agreed to “in his heart,” Kushner would not even adhere to a
price he had contractually
agreed to. As Lizzie Widdicombe relates,
Kushner was no Trump [he avoided the press]. But he had Trumpian qualities,** such as a tendency to withhold payment from venders like contractors, cleaners, and architects, forcing them to accept a fraction of their fee. [A] former Kushner Companies executive told me, “Every week we’d have meetings at Charlie’s house, and we’d go through the bills—the larger bills and corporate bills. And he’d sign them, or he’d say, ‘Offer them forty per cent.’ Or ‘Offer them fifty per cent.’ ”***
(The
mention of Donald Trump was not gratuitous. Jared Kushner, Charlie's
son, is the husband of Ivanka Trump—and a strong supporter of his
father-in-law's candidacy. Indeed, Ms. Widdicombe's New Yorker article is
entitled “Family First: How Donald Trump came to rely on Ivanka
Trump and Jared Kushner.”)
As
happens often enough when family members and business mix, family
members and business split apart. As a result of the Kushner family
feud, Charlie Kushner ended up in a federal prison, having pleaded
guilty to tax evasion, witness tampering, and making illegal campaign donations.
Widdicombe
quotes from a Charlie Kushner trade paper interview in which,
forgetting that he was the guilty party, hurls brickbats at his
siblings who opposed him:
“I don’t believe God and my parents will ever forgive my brother and sister for instigating a criminal investigation and being cheerleaders for the government and putting their brother in jail because of jealousy, hatred and spite.” [See the Widdecombe article for the wonderfully juicy details of his plotting against his family.]
What
is interesting here is the contention that God has it in for the
innocent. Perhaps Kushner felt that he could speak for God because he is a follower of the Modern Orthodox Jewish tradition, keeping a kosher
home and observing the Sabbath. He also gave a shedload money to
Hebrew schools in New Jersey.****
*
Dr.
Friedman points out that “in Jewish law, the
legal content of the law is totally conjoined with ethics, religion,
and morality.” He cites the Ten Commandments as mixing laws that
are
the foundations of every legal system (e.g., those dealing with murder, theft, and bearing false witness) with laws that are religious (e.g., against idolatry and observing the Sabbath).
Somehow,
however, the injunctions of the Talmud to observe fair business
practices and the Commandments to shun theft and bearing false
witness eluded Kushner.
But,
I guess, he figured that's ok, because he doesn't eat tref.
***
**“Donald
Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who
will 'protect your job.' But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found
he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three
decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary
Americans . . . who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay
them.”
http://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/humankind/2016/08/16/88876888/
****A
lot like Robert Brennan, another businessman-felon, who gave a shedload of money to Catholic
schools in New Jersey. La
Rochefoucauld
doesn't have it as one of his maximes
(but he should): “It's easy to give money to charity, especially
when it's other people's.”
