Talk on Fraternity for Business

Rabbi Sidney Wolf

It is the business of religion among other things, to insist on more religion in business and in the professions. Moral sensitivity & ethical practice are as essential in our commercial and industrial life as in every area of our daily existence. Indeed, every business man knows that his reputation for integrity is one of his major assets. Certainly a man's progress in any company depends in large measure on the reputation he earns through his daily behavior. It is immensely difficult to falsify such a reputation over any extended period of time. We are soon known by those around us for what we are rather than what we would like others to think about us. This is a manšs character in the profoundest sense of the world. I once heard a major executive point out that the criteria he uses for selecting employees run in this order: character, intelligence, experience. "A really bright executive picks up experience very quickly," he told me. "But the man we need and want most, in important places, is a man with character sufficient to resist any kind of pressures when the going gets rough."

What is a man's character but his personal moral dimension, the goals he sets for himself, his sense of honesty, and the responsibility, his relations with others?

Unquestionably ethics have a practical value. And the first step in the ethical life is self criticism. Ethics is a branch of thought starting with self discipline. Before anyone can think creatively about the moral life he must feel in his bones a few principles without which civilization would be meaningless.

Moral health should be put on the same level as mental and physical health if not more so. And the development of moral health should begin early in our lives to be nurtured throughout our lives. William James, an American philosopher many years ago, described us as worshippers of the Bitch Goddess, Success. If we develop a sense of responsibility to each other as competitors, as employees or employers or as members of society at large, we will no longer warrant the accusation of Professor James.

Yet I think you will agree with me that success today in many places is defined in terms of good salesmanship. There are too many who sell their real selves in exchange for superficially pleasing personalities. The textbook so many of us read is How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the growing corporate life, a man must please the one just above him. He must sell himself. Top executives hire P.R. experts to create for them a favorable image. A doctor must have a minimum of medical knowledge but he had better have a pleasant bedside manner if he wants success. A lawyer should know some law but he had better be socially acceptable if he is to have a lucrative practice. And so it goes with the insurance salesman, the mortician, and even the clergyman. Success too often demands, we think, that we must sell ourselves at her altar.

It has been said that we do not really own anything today, we possess it. A play of some years ago, "The Death of a Salesman" describes a man who attains success by selling a pleasing, ingratiating personality to his customers. When it all blows up in his face and the emptiness of his life is disclosed, he commits suicide. His son, standing over his grave, says, "Poor guy, he never knew who he was."

Is it true that money can buy anything and everything? We may not consent to this statement but by the behavior of so many of our time, it seems to represent their faith. Let there be no misunderstanding. Money is important and the shame is that so many people have so little of it. 2/3 of the world lives in poverty because of a lack of money. Yet we know only too well that there are some things that all the money in the world cannot buy. It cannot buy love of a husband or wife, of a child, of a friend. Money is good only when it leads to what money cannot buy.

Some people have understood this. Socrates could have saved his life if he agreed to think and teach what others believed. Spinoza was offered a sizable annual stipend if he would accept doctrines which the orthodox synagogue maintained but which he could not accept. He lived frugally from a small amount he earned polishing lenses. There is the lawyer who refused to accept the case from which a large fee is assured. His conscience got in his way. There is the business man who said "I'd rather lose this big store which I built up for over 50 years than violate the law of the land." There is the clergyman of a small congregation paying him less than is needed to live even poorly, who refused a call to another church with a much larger salary. He said "Some things I cannot compromise with, no matter what it costs me". There were and there are some people who know what it means to gain the whole world and lose your soul. The bitter irony of our time is that we have more of things and goods than any generation in history and we are the most bored of all of them. Have you not had the experience of trying to find a gift for the man who has everything? Is it any wonder that many young people do not want any part of this way of life. They are in rebellion against our way of life, are bored with empty existence. What ought to strike us is that very often they can see right through us. They want to be real, be themselves, to seek values which are genuine and related to themselves. They are saying to us, many of them, that we have sold our birthright, our authentic selves, for a mess of pottage. They are telling us a profound truth: that some things are just not for sale.

We need desperately to change the goals of life and to choose something else besides popular success. The notion that everyone can become rich, famous, and important is a poison in our system today. Great living is really found in that rare person, simple and unknown, who in all aspects chooses quality first. This is where our educational program falters terribly. It is directed in the main, to prepare young people for the race to the top of the ladder. The courses which count are those that will help us get more and more of the status symbols and satisfy our craving for success and importance. How little is said about the quality of life and even the way a man should die. In fact, even religion in our time promises success and fame if men will only display the right faith and acknowledge the right God. Young people need to be taught how to become unimportant to the world and how to be important in the quality of their lives. We need the humanities far more than the technologies. We need quality not quantity.

The world needs more unimportant people of quality. Noah was, the Bible tells us, a good man in his generation. He was no Abraham or Isaiah. But this simple, good man saved civilization by the quality of his life. The ark he built did not house the very important people of that day. It saved one man and one woman and through them gave humankind another chance. This is a powerful story. The world will be saved by the quality of the character of the average citizen. The modern emphasis on the leader, the important man, carries a great threat to our time. The real strength of a nation is the nature and character of its unimportant people. America's destiny will ultimately be decided by the quality of its citizens. A people whose goal in life is success and importance is bound to fail and ultimately to follow a leader who promises them fulfillment. It is about time that we announced to our young people that the greatest goal in life is to be an unimportant person of quality.

The true religious life is not in bigness, it is not in size. Elijah could not hear God's voice in the earthquake or in the fire. He heard it in the still small voice. God is most often found by those who seek him in the simple quiet place where men do not observe or take note. It is the hysop that God used to free the slaves, not the cedar of Lebanon. The success which really matters lies in the quality of life just as the faith that matters is in the still small voice.

[handwritten at end]

Let me repeat what I said in the beginning but in a different way. An ancient sage said: When we are in a synagogue or church we think of business. Can we not when in business, think of God?