The center also engages in research, providing a Jewish perspective on topics of public interest. It has a staff of 10, including five researchers, who, like Meir, are equally well qualified in both secular business studies and Jewish studies. We make a mistake when we think that, because you can talk to four people simultaneously on four different continents, that something has changed. We are talking about issues that affected our grandparents and will affect our grandchildren. Meir feels that, while secular academic business ethics asks all the right questions, it cannot provide the answers.
Jewish tradition is practical and prescriptive.
For thousands of years, we've been dealing with actual problems and we've had to find answers we could live with. The prophets minced no words in telling people when their behavior was improper. The presence of a powerful legal tradition is also important, since the law has to provide practical tools for taking a complex problem and coming up with a unique judgment. Nevertheless, it is hard to imagine a column like this existing 10 or 15 years ago, even if there had been the Internet. Tamari notes that 20 years ago there was not a single book available in either English or Hebrew dealing with Jewish business ethics.