The Meaning of Making Money

Tzvi Freeman

If life is full of meaning, why am I spending it hustling other people for their money?"

Don't think this question was invented by our bourgeois bohemian, save the world and get rich too generation. It's been around since G‑d handed Adam a hoe and kicked him out of the garden. It's just that most of Adam's children worked that hoe with their hands. Today, we are all plowing the earth with our heads. And that can mean a pretty muddy head.

Many of us try to compromise—we'll get a tad dirty and try to wash up often. So we end up with a bifurcated life in which our principal occupation is making money, and finding meaning is a pastime.

What we really want is a way to have it all. We want to discover that selling widgets is actually a path to higher consciousness and that true enlightenment doesn't have to be accessed in serene meditation remote from humanity; you can grab it from a corporate desk overlooking downtown Atlanta. Maybe even from a law firm.

But if selling widgets is all about getting hold of other people's money, what does it have to do with living a spiritual life?

We have to re examine what business is all about. Perhaps business is actually about discovering meaning. About discovering jewels in that mud.

The master Kabbalist, the "Ari" (Rabbi Isaac Luria, 1534 1572), asked a similar question 500 years ago: If man is a spiritual being, why must he eat? Animals, it would seem, are less spiritual than people. Vegetables seem even lower; and the earth, air and sunshine would appear even lower. Yet vegetation is nurtured by those basic elements, animals are nurtured by minerals and vegetation, and human beings rely on all three. Why, the Ari asked, is the pyramid turned upside down?

Or maybe it's not upside down. Maybe, in some way, animals hold within them a divine spark that is far beyond anything a human can attain on his own. Maybe the deeper you go into the mud, the brighter the sparks of G‑dliness become, so that the greatest sparks are found in the muddiest places. Which means that the real reason we eat is not for ourselves, but for the sake of our food—to uncover those sparks and connect them back to their source—and to one another.

Which is just what the Ari and his students taught: That all of human endeavor is meant to be a way to reconnect the world and reveal its G‑dly power.

However, there is a caveat to this process: In order to rescue a spark from its captivity within your food, you need to stay one step above it. If you're "grabbing a bite," the bite is grabbing you. If the food is demanding, "You must eat me now!" and you stoop and obey—then it's not the spark that's being lifted up; it's you that's being dragged down. Eating, the Ari explained, must be treated as any other spiritual activity, with composure, with mindfulness—as a human being.

Just like Adam with that hoe uncovered the power of the earth to produce bushels of food, so too our present day business is about digging value out of the abyss into which it has fallen. It is about finding meaning and exposing the secret power of the world around us. And not only the power to enhance human life, but also the power of miracles and wonders and beautiful deeds— the infinite light hidden in finite places.

The widget guy finds that infinite light hidden in an inner city high school, when he realizes how his widgets could be used as a tool for teaching cooperation and literacy. The Atlanta executive reveals it in his office when he arranges for a weekly lunch and learn session with a local rabbi who discusses Talmudic business ethics. As for the orthodontist, she finds it every day in the wonderful smiles she brings to young people, especially the ones from underprivileged families, whom she treats pro bono.

The deeper we enter into the caverns of mundane life, the more brilliant are the jewels we find—as long as we stay above while we enter within.

As the Psalmist writes, "Those who go down in ships to the sea, who do their craft in the mighty waters; they are the ones to see the works of G‑d, catching His wonders in their net." EM

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, a senior editor at Chabad.org, is the author of Bringing Heaven Down to Earth and more recently Wisdom to Heal the Earth. To subscribe to regular updates of Rabbi Freeman's writing or purchase his books, visit Chabad.org. Follow him on Facebook @RabbiTzviFreeman.