Reviews for Church and Economic Life: A Documentary Study, 1945 to the Present

The average rating for Church and Economic Life: A Documentary Study, 1945 to the Present based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-12 00:00:00 Paul Torchia This book is mostly comprised of quotes from various Jewish sacred texts (including the Torah, the Mishnah and the Talmud) as well as quotes from leading rabbis of the past millenium or so. By and large, Jewish financial ethics are common sense (don't lie, pay your bills etc) supplemented with more stringent practices based on the Torah (such as the Torah's restrictions on lending with interest). Tamari supplements the quotes with occasional short bits of commentary. I sometimes found the commentaries hard to follow. For example, after discussing the halachic ban on interest Tamari writes that "Because of fluctuations in prices or in exchange rates, it is forbidden to borrow goods on the understanding that one will return them at a later date, the price increase is regraded as interest." Is Tamari saying that you can only borrow goods if you WON'T return them? That can't be right! On the other hand, there are times when more commentary might be appropriate. For example, Tamari quotes the Chofetz Chaim (an early 20th-century rabbi) as stating that a worker must always "be paid at daybreak." Does this mean that the American custom of paying workers every couple of weeks violates halacha?

Review # 2 was written on 2020-11-03 00:00:00 Joseph Mikos Great Read Whether or not this book leans left will be for each individual reader to decide. I found this book incredibly interesting in its explanation and analysis of how the American economy has been hijacked by Republican supply side economic theory. This is a clear, cogent presentation of the author's argument and is a must read for everyone who wonders how this theory has survived in spite of its utter failure over the past thirty years.