Avodah Mailing List

Volume 42: Number 37

Mon, 27 May 2024

• 1. Interest and modern economies (Joseph Kaplan)
• 2. Re: Interest and modern economies (Akiva Miller)
• 3. Interest and modern economies (Marty Bluke)
• 4. Re: [interest] (Marty Bluke)

?Imagine a nation where those who needed a loan could easily get one, and it would be interest-free.?

It would be nice to imagine that but my sense is it never existed ? hence
the need for heter iska and, similarly, pruzbul ? and so it probably won?t
exist anywhere ever other than in our imaginations. (I?m thinking of
certain stanzas of the Lennon song.)

Joseph
Sent from my iPhone

.
I wrote:
> Imagine a nation where those who needed a loan could easily
> get one, and it would be interest-free.

R' Joseph Kaplan responded:
> It would be nice to imagine that but my sense is it never
> existed - hence the need for heter iska and, similarly, pruzbul
> - and so it probably won?t exist anywhere ever other than in
> our imaginations.

I concede that it probably never existed in the past, but that is due to
our sinfulness, exactly the same as how we had one Shabbos, long ago,
exactly one Shabbos on which not a single Jew did any melacha whatsoever.
And for whatever reason(s), we've been unable or unwilling to do that again.

But we hope, and we pray, and - most importantly - we TRY to return to that
situation, where all Jews will be united in following Hashem's directives,
among them being the probitions of melacha on Shabbos and interest among
Jews.

Akiva Miller
"If all else fails, read the Manual."
.
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I don?t know if the modern economy is ideal but it has brought tremendous
prosperity to the world. The average person today in a country like Israel
or the US lives at a standard that was unimaginable at the time of chazal.
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My impression is that many if not most poskim don?t view corporations in
that way and prohibit interest to corporations owned by Jews. Secondly,
most people today borrow money with interest to buy a house, car, or other
purchases. Just look at the level of credit card debt.
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