In August of 1921, if a German dad wanted to stop on the way home from work and pick up a loaf of fresh rye bread to bring home for dinner, he’d have to shell out a bit less than 4 marks. Two years later, in August of 1921, he’d have to shell out a bit more 69,000 marks. But it would be a good buy, because one month later, the same loaf would cost 1.5 million marks! But the madness was only getting started. By October of 1923, a loaf of rye bread cost 1.75 billion marks, and it was still a good buy, because a month later, it would cost 233 billion marks! At that point, only trillionaires could afford to stop off at the butcher and get some meat to go along with the rye bread.
Welcome to Germany in 1923.
The German mark had once been a highly respected currency. Before World War I, approximately 4.2 marks bought one American dollar. By November of 1923, one American dollar cost 4200000000000 marks. And no, I didn’t fall asleep with my finger on the 0 key, it took 4.2 Trillion marks to purchase one dollar.
Prices were no longer rising annually or monthly. They were rising daily, and eventually hourly. Workers began demanding to be paid more than once a day so their wives could meet them at the factory gates, grab the cash, and race to the stores before it lost more value. Restaurants stopped printing prices on their menus because by the time the menus came back from the printer, the prices were outdated. When people went out for dinner, they would order all their food immediately upon arriving, and have the food sit on the table getting cold, rather than pay the higher prices by the end of the evening. Apparently, even while the soup was cooling the price was warming up.
People used banknotes as wallpaper, children played with stacks of money, and bundles of marks were sometimes burned for heat because the paper was worth more as fuel than as currency. People who had spent their entire lives carefully saving for retirement, as Germans are wont to do, would suddenly discover that their entire account could no longer buy a cup of coffee. Germany had not run out of money. Germany was drowning in money. What it had run out of was value.
The disaster had been building for years. Germany financed much of World War I through debt, expecting that when they emerged victorious they would impose the costs on the losing countries. But Germany did not win, and the winners imposed the costs on the Germans. On top of that, its economy had been badly damaged, factories and industrial zones destroyed, and portions of its productive territory had been lost.
The government had expenses it could not meet and promises it could not afford. So it did what governments almost always do when reality becomes impolite: they printed money. At first, this appeared to solve the problem. Bills were paid. Workers received wages, government programs continued and expanded, the numbers in people’s accounts went up and everyone had more marks. Things were looking great!
Unfortunately, printing more claims on wealth does not create more wealth. It does not mine another ton of coal, manufacture another steel beam, grow another field of wheat, or bake another loaf of bread. It simply creates more pieces of paper chasing the same amount of reality. The bread does not become more plentiful, it becomes more expensive.
The situation accelerated disastrously in January 1923, when French and Belgian forces occupied the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, after Germany fell behind on required deliveries. The German government called upon workers to engage in “passive resistance”— by not showing up to work at the factories in the occupied territories. But striking workers still needed to eat, so the government promised to pay them.
Where would the government get the money to pay over half a million people to not produce anything? From the magical money forest, of course.
The printing presses roared, the supply of marks exploded, and the currency collapsed. The hardest working people in Germany must have been the people working the printing presses; they were working all day, every day! By the fall of 1923, Germany was issuing banknotes denominated in tens and hundreds of billions, and eventually a 100-trillion-mark note. More than 700 quintillion marks of emergency currency and roughly another 524 quintillion marks from the Reichsbank were put into circulation. If you’re curious how that would look, here’s how: 1,224,000,000,000,000,000,000 marks. There was more money than anyone had ever imagined, and less value than anyone could remember.
This economic earthquake destroyed much of Germany’s middle class. People living on pensions or fixed salaries were crushed. A retiring doctor who thought he was comfortable because in 1920 he was guaranteed a pension of 2,000 marks a month, more than double the average annual salary, couldn’t afford to buy even a loaf of bread with his entire yearly pension a few years later.
While most people were suffering, one group of people were doing really well; debtors, people who owed a lot of money. If you had borrowed 1,000,000 marks when that was enough to buy a substantial office building, you could later repay the entire loan with money that couldn’t even buy a new doormat.
No one understood that opportunity better than Hugo Stinnes. Born in 1870 into a prosperous coal-mining family in Germany’s Ruhr region, he had studied mining, worked in the family business, and at twenty-two established his own company. He was not a flashy man. He dressed simply, avoided the social circuit, and was known for working punishing hours, as Germans were wont to do. But beneath the unremarkable exterior was one of the most aggressive business minds in Europe.
Long before the worst inflation arrived, Stinnes was already wealthy and powerful. But he recognized something that most Germans did not understand until it was too late: in an inflationary world, paper promises become weaker while tangible, productive assets become stronger. So Stinnes borrowed marks and bought reality.
Stinnes did not merely want to own coal mines like his family. A coal mine needed railways and river barges to transport the coal, so he borrowed money and acquired transportation companies. It needed access to ports and ships, so borrowed more and bought shipping interests. Coal fed steel mills, so he borrowed more and invested in iron and steel. Factories needed electricity, so he moved into power generation.
As he foresaw what was happening to the mark, he became even more aggressive. He borrowed even money to purchase machinery manufacturers, timber, paper companies, oil rich land, banks, publishing houses, hotels, entire shipping lines, and newspapers. The debt remained written in marks, but the assets produced things people would continue to need regardless of what happened to the currency. The government could print another trillion marks before lunch, but it could not print another coal mine, forest, building, or factory.
As the mark collapsed, the real value of Stinnes’s debts collapsed with it. His companies charged more for their goods and services as the currency fell, but his old loans remained fixed in marks that were nearly worthless. It was the financial equivalent of borrowing enough money to buy a skyscraper and later repaying the loan with the contents of the vending machine in its lobby.
At the height of his power, Stinnes’s business network included 1,535 companies operating at 2,888 locations. Some contemporaries regarded him as the most powerful businessman in Germany; others called him the new Kaiser. But the name that stuck was more accurate, Inflationskonig, The Inflation King.
From the get go, he understood the central truth of inflation: the number printed on something and the value contained within it are not the same thing. A stack of trillion-mark notes looked impressive. It could fill a briefcase. It could make a man a billionaire, a trillionaire, or whatever comes after people stop caring. But all of it could not feed a child. A coal mine could, a factory could, a forest could, a hotel could, and a fleet of ships could.
We live in a period of a different kind of inflation. I’m not talking about monetary inflation, although the price of groceries, health insurance, or flights to Israel occasionally suggests that the wheelbarrow may be making a comeback. I’m talking about spiritual and moral inflation.
We live in a world surrounded by people trying to print symbols of goodness. A person can announce his compassion, advertise his principles, talk about generosity, and issue frequent public declarations affirming that he supports all the good things and opposes every bad thing. He can share inspirational quotations, attach noble slogans to his profile, comment passionately on suffering halfway around the world, and carefully ensure that everyone knows which side of goodness he occupies.
We issue moral currency all day long. We put up yard signs announcing that “Hate has no place in this home!” or “No Human is Illegal, Love is Love, Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere” Football players have slogans on their helmets saying “Say No To Hate, End Racism, Choose Love, or It Takes All of Us.” People post squares on their social media accounts announcing that they stand with Ukraine, or the poor suffering people of Gaza, or Black Lives Matter, or with the refugees streaming across the borders. Judges let criminals go free without bail, because bail is racist. Shoplifting goes unpunished because “people just need to eat.”
Everyone becomes morally wealthy on paper, but society does not become kinder.
The volume of displayed compassion rises while lonely people remain lonely. Charity galas become more glamorous while struggling families still feel invisible. People proclaim their support for mental health while having no patience for the anxious, difficult, or depressed person sitting beside them. We speak constantly about unity and love while refusing to call a relative because of something he said three years ago. We celebrate kindness on social media and then write scathing reviews of a restaurant because the waiter didn’t refill our water on time.
The moral currency says we are morally rich. Reality says the bread still costs 200 billion marks. Virtue signaling is attractive precisely because it allows us to print moral currency without acquiring moral assets. I can appear compassionate without sacrificing anything. I can advertise generosity without giving enough to affect my lifestyle. I can speak about the importance of Torah while rarely opening a Jewish book. I can express deep concern for the Jewish people while declining to put myself at risk to speak up on their behalf when the fashionable thing is to bash the Jewish people and our Homeland.
The Mishnah in Ethics of Our Fathers (1:17) teaches, “Lo hamidrash ikar, ela hamaaseh—the primary thing is not study, but the action.” The Mishnah is warning us against allowing knowledge, discussion, and noble expression to masquerade as transformation. What matters is whether the idea crosses the border from our mouth into our life.
Words are printable. Actions are hard assets. As a comedian once set, “everyone wants to be a hero, no one wants to do the dishes.”
You can print a million statements about kindness, but you cannot manufacture the hour you spent sitting with a lonely person. You cannot inflate the phone call made to someone who was struggling, the meal quietly delivered to a family in crisis, or the patience you showed a child when every nerve in your body was asking you to just yell.
You cannot print twenty minutes of sincere prayer where your phone never shows up in your hand and you didn’t talk to anyone but G-d. You cannot artificially inflate an hour of Torah learning done when you were tired and busy. You cannot mass-produce the moment you swallowed the sharp reply that desperately wanted to escape your mouth. You cannot print the apology that cost you your pride, the compliment you gave when jealousy urged silence, or the tzedakah check large enough to require giving something else up.
Those are coal mines. Those are power plants. Those are ships filled with cargo. Those are real. The public sees the denominations printed on the note. Hashem sees the assets behind it.
This weeks Torah portion, Parshas Re’eh opens with, (Deut. 11:26-28), Look, I place before you today, a blessing and a curse. The blessing—that you heed the commandments of Adonoy, your God, that I am commanding you today. And the curse—if you do not heed the commandments of Adonoy, your God, and you veer from the course which I command you this day, to follow other gods which you did not know. Blessing and curse, is not about what you say, it’s not about what you care about, it’s about what you do.
The Maharal (Rabbi Yehuda Lowy, 1520-1609, Prague) explains that the Hebrew word for a deed, maaseh, represents something brought into concrete reality. Caring may be beautiful, talking about the importance of caring is even better, but action takes the spiritual potential inside a human being and places it into Hashem’s world. Before the action, the kindness exists as possibility. Afterward, someone is less hungry. Someone feels less alone. A home has more peace. A Jew knows more Torah. The world itself has changed.
That is value discovery. While the world produces endless declarations, let’s purchase hard spiritual assets. Let’s acquire another hour of Torah, another honest blessing or prayer, another act of quiet generosity, another restrained word, another repaired relationship, another person made to feel significant. These assets may never trend. They may not generate plaques, posts, or applause. No one may know they exist. But Hashem does.
And when the great accounting is eventually conducted, the question will not be how morally wealthy we appeared, how much spiritual currency we printed, or how effectively we marketed our righteousness. The question will be what we acquired with the life Hashem lent us.
Did we turn our years into Torah? Did we turn our resources into kindness? Did we turn our challenges into character? Did we turn another person’s pain into relief?
In a world awash in paper, let’s buy reality.
Parsha Dvar Torah
This week’s Parsha contains a verse telling the Jewish people that they cannot bring their offerings wherever they want, like the Canaanites did before them, rather they should bring them to a central Temple to bring them in unity and collective sanctity. The verse reads (Deut 12:5), “But only to the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes, to set His Name there; you shall inquire after His dwelling and come there.” What’s conspicuously missing is the name of the place that G-d would be choosing? The place that would later be the Beis Hamikdash was already known, greats as far back as Avraham and Jacob had prayed them and commented about the holiness of the place and the central role it would later play in the Jewish people’s history. So why here does the Torah purposely obfuscate the place and just call it by the vague term “the place which the Lord your God shall choose from all your tribes?”
The Guide for the Perplexed, a masterpiece of theology written by Maimonides around the year 1190 CE addresses this question and provides a few answers. The first answer is that G-d purposely hid the location of the future temple so that the gentiles living in the land not destroy and mar the beauty of that location to spite the Jews. But it is the second answer that Maimonides advances that provides even deeper insight into our hearts and minds; G-d his the location of the temple because had He provided the exact location, the Tribes of Israel would have fought with each other over it and caused much hatred and perhaps even bloodshed. It was better for G-d to leave the place unnamed and to only point it out after all the tribes were settled.
This shows us how easy it is for people to go to war with others in their attempt to carve out “holy territory” for themselves. The idea is laughable; that people would go to war with each other to become more holy, but we do it all the time. To this day there have been so many people who don’t just discuss and debate ideas of what is correct and good, but get emotionally invested to the point that they get angry and hate other people just because they each want to lay claim to the moral high ground! Hashem wants all of His children getting along, like any father wants for his children, and the last thing He wants to see is us fighting each other “in His name.”
Now we have no Temple, it was destroyed because of infighting. Once again, G-d is hiding His temple, this time we know the geographic location, we just don’t have the building. Let’s do everything we can to unite with our brethren, especially those who don’t practice like me, so that when Hashem sees that we’ve resolved our differences, He’ll bring His house once again out of obscurity and make it real once again, as the Mashiach ushers in a rebuilt Yerushalayim, a rebuilt Beis Hamikdash, and a rebuilt world!
Parsha Summary
This week's parsha, Parshas Re’eh, begins with the declaration that ultimately, we are faced with a choice between blessing and curse, between good and evil, between following G-d’s commandments or ignoring them. G-d then tells us about the ceremony that would take place soon after the Jews entered the land of Israel . They would travel to an area that had two mountains, Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Eival . The tribes would be divided between the two mountains with the tribe of Levi, holding the ark, in the valley. They would enunciate certain blessings, followed by inverse curses, facing the mountains and the Jews would answer Amen to each one. (We will see this in more detail in a later Parsha.) This was supposed to be a formative experience for the Jewish nation as they entered the land of their destiny.
The Torah then reminds the Jews that when they enter the land they should destroy all idols, altars, and trees that were served as idols, so as not to leave any temptation around. (This would be similar to telling an alcoholic to remove all alcohol from the house if he wants to stay clean. Having bottles of gin hanging around the house in various places is simply not conducive to an alcohol free lifestyle.)
The Torah also goes into detail describing the laws of bamos, mini altars that Jews were allowed to have at times when the Tabernacle was in a transient state. One could only bring certain types of offerings upon them (optional donation, not mandatory sacrifices), and once the First Temple was built, bamos were forbidden forever.
The Torah also talks about the laws of eating non-sacrificial meat. Rashi points out two very interesting things we can learn from this portion. The Torah begins the discussion "When Ad-noy, your G-d, expands your border as He promised you, and you say, "I would like to eat meat" because you have an appetite to eat meat; to the full extent of your appetite eat meat. When the place is distant from you that Ad-noy, your G-d, chooses to set His presence there, you may slaughter some of your cattle or your flocks that Ad-noy gave you, as I have commanded you; and you will eat in your cities with all your appetite." (Deut. 12:20-21) The first thing Rashi mentions is that the Torah is teaching us the proper way to live. We should not expect to eat a lot of meat until after G-d expands our borders (i.e. makes us more wealthy). This is a prime lesson in living within your means.
The second thing he shows us is that in the second verse, the Torah tells us to slaughter animals “as I have commanded you.” The only problem is that no where in the entire Torah does G-d tell us how to slaughter. This is one of the indicators that the Torah was given in two parts, the Written Law which contains the mitzvot’s basic info, dialogues with G-d and our leaders, and events that happened to the Jews, and the Oral Law which gives details to many of the mitzvoth that were only outlined in the Torah.
This is just one of many indicators that a Jew can't say "I will only do what I see written in the Pentateuch," as it is clear that it is impossible to do so successfully. How would someone like that slaughter animals? It is not until we study the Oral Law that we find the laws of slaughtering. (Originally, the Oral Law was meant to be transmitted only orally, as to preserve the Torah as a living experience not a simple subset of facts you could leave to collect dust on your shelves. However, when the Jews started to forget that which was transmitted, R' Yehuda the Prince decided that he must commit those teachings to writing lest they be lost forever.)
The Torah continues with the prohibition against adding or subtracting from any of the mitzvot i.e. wearing 3 tzitzit fringes instead of four, or keeping two days of Shabbos. The Torah then warns us about a false prophet. This prophet may perform miracles and do wondrous things, but if he dares to advocate idolatry or attempts to permanently delete any of the mitzvot, then we know he is a false prophet and he is given the death penalty.
This same penalty is given to an individual who tries to seduce other people to serve idols. The Rabbis tell us that one who influences someone to become evil is in a sense worse than one who killed someone. A person who kills someone takes away the ephemeral world, Olam Hazeh, whereas one who sways someone to evil robs him of the infinite world, Olam Haba. This is why we treat someone who tries to seduce others to serve foreign gods with such severity.
The Torah continues talking about the severity of idolatry, by discussing a city in which the majority or all of the inhabitants have turned to idolatry. The law regarding such a city is that all the guilty parties (people who served idols) are put to death, while all the property of the city must be burned and left as a heap, never to be rebuilt.
The Torah continues with the laws of which animals are kosher (ones that have split hooves and chew their cud), and which ones aren't (ones that don't), which fish are kosher (ones that have fins and scales), and which birds are kosher (all except 24 enumerated species. Since we are no longer certain what all of those species are, we only eat birds which know are OK through tradition).
The Torah then commands to take a second tithing on our crops (the first one goes to the Levite – that's me!) and, depending on the year of the Sabbatical cycle, either give it to the poor or bring it to Jerusalem and eat it there. If you can't bring it to Jerusalem you can redeem them by transferring its sanctity onto coins of the same value, and bring those coins to Jerusalem where you use them to purchase food. Next, the Torah mentions its loan forgiveness program, i.e. every Sabbatical (Shemita) year, all debts that have no collateral or liens are forgiven.
The Torah continues by commanding us to loan money to the poor and destitute if we have the means to do so (an incredible mitzvah as it gives people a method to get back on their feet without having to be reduced to begging door to door). And the Torah tells us not to worry that the debt will get wiped away by the Shemita/ Sabbatical year, as G-d will take care of those who take care of his most vulnerable children, the poor and the destitute.
The Torah continues with a discussion of the Jewish bondsman, see my email from Parshat Mishpatim for more details (I am quite confident that all of you have been saving each and every email you got from me, so it should be no problem to pull up the one on Mishpatim.) The Torah concludes with a recap of the three festivals, Pesach, Shavout and Succot, and the commandment on the Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to spend the festivals in the holiest city on this great green earth with which the Lord has blessed us!
Quote of the Week: A person without a plan for the day is lost before it starts. – Lewis Bendele
Random Fact of the Week: A Boy Scout must earn 21 badges before he is eligible to become an Eagle Scout.
Funny Line of the Week: I got a job at a bakery because I kneaded the dough!
Have a Splendiferous Shabbos,
R’ Leiby Burnham