Business Ethics: Following the Expected Custom - Rabbi Shlomo Cohen

[Music] [Applause] in the previous two shim that we spoke about in this series on Jewish monetary law we spoke about a verbal agreement and we've spoken about a thought in Jewish monetary law today I want to talk about a type of contractural obligation that is not actually written anywhere in the Torah but it's something that is customary amongst us let me start off by telling you a story this is a true story a lady went into a into a fishmonger shop into a fish shop on a Friday morning to buy a nice fish for her shabas table she saw in the Fish mongers Fresh Fish and she chose a really nice big fat fish and she told the guy in the shop the worker to cut it open and clean it for her so she can take it home and filet the fish so that she can uh it'll be ready for her to prepare easily when she goes home the guy took the fish the worker in the shop took the fish took out his knives started cutting it open to clean it and lo and behold inside the stomach of the fish he found a pearl necklace at that moment everyone in the shop started shouting Mrs Cohen that's the lady who's buying the fish started shouting the pearl necklace is mine I bought the fish and the owner of the shop started shouting no no no the pearl necklace is mine I haven't sold you the fish yet and even if I had sold you the fish I didn't sell you a pearl necklace I just sold you a fish and by coincidence the fisherman who caught the fish he was also there in the shop and he started shouting no no no the pearl necklace is mine I caught the fish I found the I acquired the pearl necklace when I caught the fish and I never sold you the owner of the shop that pearl necklace and the worker in the shop he also started shouting said no no no you're all wrong I found the pearl necklace none of you knew that there was a pearl necklace there and I found it so who's right let me just emphasize that Mrs Cohen hadn't paid any cash she hadn't ironed her credit card she hadn't taken possession of the fish she hadn't touched it she just said to the worker in the shop that's the fish that I want the first question that we have to deal with before we can decide who the pearl necklace belongs to we have to realize we have to decide who the fish belongs to then maybe we can see who the pearl necklace belongs to but you might might see that it might not be so simple that the pearl necklace is going to go along with a fish but first of all let's talk about who the fish belongs to right now in any business transaction there are stages there are stages to the transaction there as we've said there's the thought that you decide to sell there's the verbal agreement and then there's the actual contractual act the actual change of ownership we know is only where there's been a contractual act so seeing as Mrs Cohen hasn't paid any money she hasn't taken in possession you would think that she hasn't yet bought the fish but I want to show you give you an example of something I want to show you something that happens in the business world I don't know if any of any of you have ever been to the Diamond Exchange in ramatan the Tel Aviv Diamond Exchange there's also a very very well-developed Diamond Exchange in anwer all these places were full of Jews the Jews were the people that were the big diamond dealers in the Diamond Exchange they have a custom the custom works like this two dealers sit down over the table they take out the stones they look over them they talk about the price when they've come to a final agreement they say ma maa as soon as they said those holy words of MAA they will never go back on a deal the deal is finished any diamond dealer that were to go back on his word after he said maua would be thrown out of the Diamond Exchange he wouldn't be allowed to carry on making doing business there it's interesting to note that today when now in certainly in antp most of the diamond are not necessarily religious Jews as they were a lot of them are Indians and pakistanis and Chinese and people from all over the world and still to this day they all say MAA when they're closing a deal the custom there is that when you say ma the deal is finished and you don't go back on that if two Diamond dealers were to sell to go down to the car park to sell a car to each other and one of them said ma after they'd agreed on all the on all the the the the details of the deal how much was going to be paid Etc from that moment they would be considered as if there's a binding deal a change of ownership even something that you could never never go back on why because as far as these two Diamond dealers are concerned in their mind when you say ma there's already been a Kenyon the thing is finished the deal is over there's nothing more to discuss they won't go back on their word that's their custom whereas if I'm doing if I decide to buy a car from a diamond dealer and he says to me Ma so it doesn't mean anything to me between me and him we just have a normal verbal agreement which there's a moral obligation obligation to keep but there hasn't been a change of ownership here right there's just an obligation to Stand by Your Word what do we see from here we see from here that a custom in the marketplace is binding in Jewish monetary law that Jewish monetary law always has to follow the custom amongst business people anything that it's accustom that that is a Kenyon that that is a a contract ual act we will have to honor in Jewish monetary law any case between two Diamond dealers that came to a basin where one of them wanted to go back on his word after he said ma Basin would have to pass and even though it doesn't actually have a basis in Jewish monetary law based in with Pasa that there's been a final binding deal here and there's not it's just not possible to go back on your words it's like there's been a change of ownership already because the custom is binding if now with that understanding we go back to the case of the fish so tell me if you walked as a buyer into a shop and you chose the fish and the guy started cutting it open for you to clean it can you now after he's cut it open say no hang on a sec you know there's a fatter fish over there I think I want that one instead I've check changed my mind you can't change your mind everyone understands that once the owner of the shop or the worker it doesn't make any difference has start cut to cut open the fish for me I certainly can't now say you know I'd like to take another fish if something is wrong with the fish then of course I can go back on my word it's a invalid sale right it's a faulty sale but we're not talking about when there's something wrong with the fish the fish is fine everything's good with the fish the only thing that's wrong is that I decided to change my mind so I think we all understand that at that stage of such a deal you don't change your mind so therefore even though Mrs Cohen has not yet paid any money has not taken delivery of the fish nevertheless a binding deal has been done and the fish belongs to Mrs Cohen at this point in time when the diamond when the when the pearl necklace excuse me was found inside the stomach of the fish the fish belongs to to to Mrs Coen but does that mean necessarily that the pearl necklace also belongs to Mrs Ken it doesn't necessarily mean that and let me give you an example to prove that let's say you walk into your supermarket and on the floor by the fridge with the milk in you find a $100 bill lying on the floor there what do you do are you allowed to take it do you have to give it to the owner of the shop what's your obligation in Jewish monetary law the is that we can presume that the owner of that $100 bill knows that he's lost it and has already given up hope of ever getting it back we have a principle that people check their pockets all the time people who have money in their pocket will know almost immediately when they've lost it that's a presumption it may not be true in all cases but it can be presumed says the gamorra so the owner has already given up any hope of ever getting back this $100 bill because he knows that he wherever he's lost it someone's going to just take it if he were to lose it in in sh or in a Yeshiva maybe he wouldn't give up hope because he knows that the place is just full of honest people but where he's lost in in a public place he's going to give up hope of ever getting it back so you have just found property that is ownerless so you'd be able to take it and you wouldn't necessarily be obligated to give it to the owner of the shop or to give it to the cashier and ask her to announce the find something that in addition of course we have to say that this $100 bill doesn't have any signs on it that we can identify through those signs who is the owner even if it did had us to have any signs on it we couldn't rely on them because just because one person knows the numbers of that $100 bill doesn't mean that it was lost from him because a $100 bill is something that's changing hands all the time so the fact that it was by me an hour ago and I knew the numbers on it doesn't mean that it was mine when it was lost because maybe five minutes ago I bought something with that $100 bill right and it doesn't belong to me anymore so with something like like a $100 bill a sign wouldn't work anyway but the big question that everyone asks here is why doesn't it belong to the owner of the shop it's in his property it's in his shop why don't we say that his property will acquire the $100 bill on his behalf we know that there's a rule that your your property can acquire things on your behalf so why doesn't it the shop acquire that $100 bill for the owner of the shop there's a number of different answers to this question one of the answers which is the one that I want to take for here from here is that seeing as the shop owner never knew and never dreamed that that $100 bill was going to be there so therefore his domain cannot acquire such things on his behalf your domain you're right your domain acquires things Shalom it says even without your without you having intention but that's things that are protected within your that are protected within your domain and you had an idea that they were going to be there what I'm telling you is that your your domain does not acquire on your behalf Lost Property that you never thought was going to be there whoever finds it first they're the owner if I had a garden party and someone comes to my garden party and they find $100 bill on the floor in the garden right in a place where probably didn't you can't presume that it fell from me the owner of the property they would be able to take it the fact that it's in my property doesn't make it mine anything that belonged to me that I've lost in my property is mine right I haven't lost it if it's in my property even if I don't know where it is right now but if someone else loses something there I can't acquire my property will not acquire that on my behalf because I don't know it's there there are other um places that we can prove this principle from we don't have really time to do that right now maybe in another sheer later on I'll also mention another proof of this rule um but the meaning of the this rule is that now when Mrs when when they found the d The Diamond the pearl necklace inside of the fish so just the fact that the fish belongs to Mrs Cohen doesn't mean that the diamond necklace also belongs to Mrs Co and if it doesn't belong to her then who does it belong to it belongs to the guy that found it because no one acquired it it doesn't belong to anyone it's an own it's ownerless property the first person to find it he's the person who's going to get it therefore it's the worker in the shop who's right he's the one that has acquired the diamond necklace because he was the first one to find it let me just with this principle tell you about another case that once you understand this principle you might think you can answer this other case and I'll show you that there's a very subtle difference between the two we got a phone call from someone in in America their father a the father a man had just died um a religious man who had a a bookcase like every good Jew does at home with all his Jewish books with all his books for learning and his son unfortunately wasn't going in the same way as his father and after his father died he packed up all his father's books into a box and went to his local Rabbi and said here Rabbi you can take these books I have no use for them please take these books and do with them as you please you can keep them for yourself you can give them to your children you can give them to your Sho do whatever you like with them I'm giving them to you the rabbi opened the box after this after the the the sun had gone open up the the box he looked through the books and he saw one book that caught his eye it looked to him like it was an antique book he took it out and showed it to to one of a member of his sh who's an antique dealer the guy told him that it's the first edition of the book no M and it's worth about $100,000 on the market the rabbi was in shock but now the question comes what is he supposed to do can he keep the book for himself or does he have to give it back to the to the son who gave it to him so from the principle that we just said you might say that the son never acquired that book it doesn't belong to the sun it's just like the pearl necklace that was inside the fish whoever found it can keep it the domain cannot acquire on your behalf things that you never dreamed were going to be there we said and so therefore let's say the same with this book The noik that when the father died the son never acquired it and when he gave it at the boxes over to the rabbi the rabbi acquired that book when he found it the answer is no because there's a very big difference between the two cases in the case of the lady buying the fish the whole acquisition here is dependent on people's minds on what was in her mind whether she thought it was going to be there or she didn't think it was going to be there the reason why she didn't acquire it together with the fish was because we said she didn't realize or think that she was going to acquire such a thing but in the case of of of of a yusha in the case of an inheritance when a father dies he can have property in China he can have property in Switzerland he can have property in timbak too it doesn't make any difference where his property is the moment he dies all that property belongs to his heirs according to Torah law or belongs to his children they don't need to make any Act of acquisition to acquire them that we can say that you can only acquire things that you know where they are that doesn't apply within the laws of inheritance that applies when you and me are doing business together when I'm buying something from you I have to know what I'm buying I can't acquire things that I didn't know were there but when I'm doing business with kesu when he he's the person the person cavok that is that is that is giving me that property he is transferring ownership of that property from the father to the son he doesn't have any problems about knowing what's there or not knowing what's there and so without any doubt without any Shadow of Doubt that book belongs to the son when the father died he inherited that book and that is the son's property when the son packed up the books and gave them over to the rabbi we have no doubt at all that if he'd known that that book was there he would not have given it over to the rabbi you don't give over $100,000 books to your local Rabbi so we know that it was a mistake there's no doubt about it at all a mistake has to be corrected and therefore the obligation on the rabbi was to give that book back to the son a big difference between the two cases an important principle about what you can Stand By and what you can't by and the difference between the laws of inheritance and the laws of acquisition thank [Music] you