Judaism Business Ethics

Judaism
• The oldest among monotheistic
religions
• Its ethical precepts are more than
3000 years old
• Judaism is founded on two main
sources: Jewish Bible( written
Torah) and the Talmud (oral Torah)
• The Jewish Bible tells the story of how
God(Yahweh) made a covenant with
Abraham and his descendants.
• It centers in the story of Moses helping
liberate the Jews from the Egyptians
• The ten commandments or the
Decalogue seals the relationship between
Yahweh and Israel (Jewish nation)
 Five themes in Jewish Ethics
• Right action
• Free choice
• Balance
• Covenant
• Dialogue
• In Jewish Ethics there is a clear
preference for appropriate actions
and good deeds.
• Jewish Ethics exhorts the
contemporary businesspersons to
show his/her goodness through
concrete acts.
• A good or right action is certainly
more valuable than the greatest
intention.
• The notion of covenant is central to
Jewish Ethics, Covenant may be
defined formally as a voluntary
agreement among independent equal
agents to create a shared community.
 Jewish Corporate Accountability
• is explained as, "to legitimately justify
an organization’s decisions and
actions, corporate accountability is
now viewed and described by many
as a dialogue between the
corporation and its stakeholders and
not as a monologue on the part of
management.”