Meir Tamari (; 1927–2021) was an economist and author whose work is in the field of
Jewish business ethics Jewish business ethics is a form of applied Jewish ethics that examines ethical issues that arise in a business environment. It is noted that in the Torah, there are over 100 ''Mitzvot'' concerning the ''kashrut'' (fitness) of one's money, many mor ...
. He was among the first individuals to teach university courses, write scholarly works, and establish a study center in this field.
Biography
Tamari was born Leopold Fagov in
Cape Town
Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...
, South Africa, in 1927, and graduated from the
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa.
Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...
with a
degree in economics in 1948.
[Tamari 1977, p. v.] Tamari was an active member of the Zionist
Bnei Akiva
Bnei Akiva (, , "Children of Akiva") is the largest religious Zionist youth movement in the world, with over 125,000 members in 42 countries. It was first established in Mandatory Palestine in 1929, advocating the values of Torah and labor.
Bne ...
youth group, and in 1950, he joined other members of this group in moving to
Israel
Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
. At first he settled in
Kfar Darom
Kfar Darom () was a kibbutz and an Israeli settlement within the Gush Katif bloc in the Gaza Strip.
History
Kfar Darom was founded on 250 dunams of land (about 25 hectares or 60 acres) purchased in 1930 by Tuvia Miller for a fruit orchard on t ...
, moving soon afterwards to
Kibbutz
A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...
Shluchot. Tamari coined his Hebrew name from the
palm
Palm most commonly refers to:
* Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand
* Palm plants, of family Arecaceae
** List of Arecaceae genera
**Palm oil
* Several other plants known as "palm"
Palm or Palms may also refer to:
Music ...
trees—Hebrew ''tamar''—in Shluchot.
In 1960, Tamari became an economist at the
Bank of Israel
The Bank of Israel (, ) is the central bank of Israel. The bank's headquarters is located in Kiryat HaMemshala in Jerusalem with a branch office in Tel Aviv. The current governor is Amir Yaron.
The primary objective of the Bank of Israel is to ...
, attaining the status of Senior Economist in 1967. He was responsible for the bank's
Corporate Finance
Corporate finance is an area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of businesses, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analy ...
Project, analyzing the economic characteristics of manufacturing firms. This study attracted international attention. In 1971, Tamari served as a special consultant to the UK Royal Commission on Small Firms, and later he was invited by the French ''Centre national de la recherche scientifique'' (
CNRS
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...
) to make a comparison of corporate financial patterns in various countries. This research formed the basis of his doctoral thesis at the
City University of London
City, University of London was a public university from 1966 to 2024 in London, England. It merged with St George's, University of London to form City St George's, University of London in August 2024. The names "City, University of London" and ...
, which granted him a
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in 1976. The thesis was later published as a book, ''Some International Comparisons of Industrial Financing''.
Subsequently, Tamari served as senior lecturer in economics at
Bar Ilan University
Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...
. Bar Ilan defines itself as a religious Jewish university, but Tamari was disturbed by the seeming disconnect between the Jewish and academic identities of the school and its students. He wrote: "Although the university is an
Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism is a collective term for the traditionalist branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as literally revealed by God on Mount Sinai and faithfully tra ...
institution, I found myself teaching course in corporate finance in exactly the same way I would have done in any other university in the world, with the content completely divorced from a Jewish value system."
[Tamari 1987, p. xi] He began to introduce more Jewish sources and content into his economics courses, in order to emphasize that Jewish tradition adopts a particular ethical approach to economic issues and problems.
Ultimately, Tamari "created a special course that would attempt to present to the students this value system and its practical application to economics".
This was the first, or among the first, accredited
business ethics
Business ethics (also known as corporate ethics) is a form of applied ethics or professional ethics, that examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. It applies to all aspects of business c ...
course offered in an Israeli institution of higher learning. These courses helped Tamari to lay the foundations of his approach to
Jewish business ethics Jewish business ethics is a form of applied Jewish ethics that examines ethical issues that arise in a business environment. It is noted that in the Torah, there are over 100 ''Mitzvot'' concerning the ''kashrut'' (fitness) of one's money, many mor ...
.
In 1987, Tamari published ''With All Your Possessions: Jewish Ethics and Economic Life'' based on the Bar Ilan University course. This was followed by ''The Challenge of Wealth: A Jewish Perspective on Earning and Spending Money'' (1995), ''Al Chet: Sins in the Marketplace'' (1996), and ''Jewish Values in our Open Society: A Weekly Torah Commentary'' (2000).
In 1992, Tamari founded the Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility, on the campus of the
Jerusalem College of Technology
The Jerusalem College of Technology - Lev Academic Center (JCT; ) is a private college in Israel, recognized by the Council for Higher Education, which specializes in providing high-level science and technology education to the Jewish community. ...
. He continues to serve as the honorary head of the center. Today, the center is known as the Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem.
Meir Tamari died in January 2021.
Jewish business ethics
Tamari's approach to business ethics is characterized by integration and harmonization of the various aspects of Jewish economic activity. In ''With All Your Possessions'', Tamari criticizes
Werner Sombart Werner may refer to:
People
* Werner (name), origin of the name and people with this name as surname and given name
Fictional characters
* Werner (comics), a German comic book character
* Werner Von Croy, a fictional character in the ''Tomb Rai ...
and
Max Weber
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (; ; 21 April 186414 June 1920) was a German Sociology, sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economy, political economist who was one of the central figures in the development of sociology and the social sc ...
for focusing solely on contemporary Jewish behavior, and neglecting Jewish tradition and religion. By comparison, Aaron Levine of
Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is a Private university, private Modern Orthodox Judaism, Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City. , who has published books on the topic of Jewish business ethics, bases his approach almost exclusively on the religious side, namely normative dictates of Jewish law (
halacha
''Halakha'' ( ; , ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws that are derived from the Written and Oral Torah. ''Halakha'' is based on biblical commandments ('' mi ...
). Another common approach focuses on
homiletic
In religious studies, homiletics ( ''homilētikós'', from ''homilos'', "assembled crowd, throng") is the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific art of public preaching. One who practices or studies homiletics may be c ...
expressions from the Bible and other Jewish sources about the importance of integrity. Tamari's work combines all these resources. Tamari's work makes use of communal records of medieval Jewish communities. Communal enactments recorded in these records are often significantly different from the kind of codified legal directives used by Levine.
Tamari does not claim that Judaism dictates a specific type of economic regime; he writes: "Judaism does not propose any specific economic theory or system; rather, it proposes a moral-religious framework within which the theory or system must operate". However, in other writings he makes clear that Judaism does place certain limits on economic systems.
Tamari says that champions of capitalism use the Jew as a role model for private enterprise. The problem with these arguments is that they separate Jewish economic practices from Jewish sources. These sources impose important restraints on the free market model, restraints that derive from the peculiarly Jewish concepts of mutual responsibility while capitalism is based on egotism and selfishness.
According to Tamari, despite Judaism's insistence on economic justice, charity, and mutual assistance, it also recognizes the legitimacy of private property, the
profit motive
In economics, the profit motive is the motivation of firms that operate so as to maximize their profits. Mainstream microeconomic theory posits that the ultimate goal of a business is "to make money" - not in the sense of increasing the firm ...
and the market mechanism.
Jewish Weekly
/ref> In other words, neither socialism
Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...
nor total laissez-faire capitalism
''Laissez-faire'' ( , from , ) is a type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies or regulations). As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire' ...
is consistent with Jewish values.
Awards
Tamari has been awarded the "Transparency Shield" from Transparency International
Transparency International e.V. (TI) is a German registered association founded in 1993 by former employees of the World Bank. Based in Berlin, its nonprofit and non-governmental purpose is to take action to combat global corruption with civil s ...
.
Selected publications
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Notes
Sources
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External links
Business Ethics Center of Jerusalem
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tamari, Meir
1927 births
2021 deaths
Israeli economists
Israeli people of South African-Jewish descent
South African emigrants to Israel
University of Cape Town alumni
Jewish economists
South African Jews
Academic staff of Bar-Ilan University
Jewish Israeli writers
Writers from Cape Town