The Jewel and the Donkey

Fourth in the series “Seek the Peace of the City,” on what Judaism teaches Jews about the countries they live in. Earlier installments are here: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

The Jerusalem Talmud tells a story about Shimon ben Shetach, one of the leading sages of the first century BCE. He made his living in the flax trade. His students wanted to spare him the work of hauling it, so they bought him a donkey from an Arab merchant. When they brought the animal home, they found a precious stone tied to its neck. They came to their teacher delighted, because the stone, they said, would let him stop working and devote himself entirely to study.

Shimon ben Shetach asked them whether the seller had known the stone was there. They said he had not. Then return it, he told them. He had bought a donkey, not a jewel.

When the merchant received the stone back, the Talmud records, he said: “Blessed is the God of Shimon ben Shetach.”

The previous articles in this series looked at what Judaism teaches Jews about their governments: seek the city’s welfare, keep its laws, pray for its rulers. This article turns to something closer to daily life, the way a Jew is required to deal with the non-Jewish neighbor across the counter, the street, or the contract.

What the law says

The rule on theft is explicit, and it is the same for everyone. Maimonides, in his code of Jewish law, states that it is forbidden to steal even the smallest amount, whether from a Jew or from a non-Jew. The Shulchan Aruch, the code that governs Jewish practice today, says the same. Jewish law has no category that makes theft from a non-Jew anything other than theft.

Deception is forbidden too, and here the tradition goes further than most legal systems do. The Talmud teaches that it is forbidden to deceive people, “even a non-Jew,” and the examples it gives are ordinary enough to show how seriously the rule is meant. A person may not press an invitation on a guest he knows will refuse, just to seem generous. He may not sell meat from an animal that died on its own as though it had been properly slaughtered, even to a buyer who would never know the difference. The prohibition reaches past outright fraud to the creation of any false impression in another person’s mind. Maimonides codifies it in the section of his work devoted to character, not only in the laws of commerce.

Behind both rules stands the Torah’s own command about weights and measures. “You shall not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small,” it says, and it calls the person who deals dishonestly “an abomination to the Lord.” The verse makes no distinction about whom the merchant is selling to.

Why the neighbor is watching

The tradition gives a second reason for honesty toward non-Jews, and it says a great deal about how Jews were taught to understand their position.

Jewish teaching holds that the conduct of a Jew reflects on God Himself. When a Jew behaves honorably, people who see it think better of the God he serves; the tradition calls this kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God’s name. When a Jew behaves dishonestly, the opposite happens. The tradition calls that chillul Hashem, desecrating God’s name, and treats it as one of the gravest sins there is.

The Talmud puts this in a teaching about a scholar of Torah. If he deals honestly in business and speaks gently with people, it says, people will say of him: fortunate is his father who taught him Torah, fortunate is his teacher; see how pleasant his ways are. If he does the opposite, they will say: woe to the one who learned Torah. That is what happened when the sage returned the jewel. The merchant’s praise went to the God of Shimon ben Shetach, not only to the man himself.

This principle bound Jews especially tightly in their dealings with non-Jews, because a minority is always watched. A Jewish merchant in a medieval market, or a Jewish shopkeeper in a modern city, was understood to carry his people’s reputation and his God’s name with him into every transaction. Honesty toward the neighbor was good business, but the tradition counted it first as part of what a Jew owed to God.

A claim that circulates

Readers who spend time online will have met the opposite claim, that the Talmud permits Jews to cheat non-Jews. It appears in pamphlets and on social media as lines quoted from obscure passages, usually stripped of their context and of the centuries of commentary around them.

The Talmud is a vast record of legal argument. Like the ancient legal literature of every civilization, it contains discussions of how its civil law applied to people outside the community, and the later authorities debated, limited, and applied those discussions. But Jewish practice is not decided by isolated lines of Talmudic debate. It is decided by the codes, and the codes are plain. Theft from a non-Jew is forbidden. Deceiving a non-Jew is forbidden. Any act that would lead outsiders to think less of God and His Torah is forbidden with special severity. A reader who wants to know what observant Jews are actually taught can open Maimonides or the Shulchan Aruch and see for himself.

What this means for the old accusation

The charge of divided loyalty often travels with a second charge, that Jews keep one standard among themselves and another toward everyone else. The tradition answers both in the same way. It asks a Jew to seek the welfare of his city, keep its laws as his own, and pray for its government. It also asks him to deal with every one of its people as honestly as he would deal with his own family, because the God he serves is watching, and so is his neighbor.

Individuals fall short of that standard in every community. When they do, they break Jewish law and desecrate the name of God, and the tradition says so without hedging. The standard itself has not changed since a sage told his students to return a jewel the seller would never have missed.

The next article looks at how that standard has worked in practice: what the historical record shows about observant Jewish communities as citizens of the countries where they lived.