[Avodah] Lashon Hara about non-Jews

[Yitzhak Grossman]

On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 15:55:49 +0200
"Michael Makovi" <mikewinddale at gmail.com> wrote:

> interest is morally fine. Now, on business matters, I see no problem -
> and apparently Chazal didn't either, since they created the heter
> iska. But notice that he heter iska is forbidden for personal

Hazal, although they discuss business arrangements called Iskas, didn't
create what is contemporarily called a Heter Iska, which apparently
first appears in the Halachic literature of both Sephardim and
Ashkenazim in the sixteenth century, although it is, of course, based
on the Talmudic rules of Iska [0].

> household type transactions - it seems to me that Chazal felt that
> morally, it would be wrong to use a heter iska to permit interest for
> necessary household goods. Only for non-necessary (i.e. business)
> transactions did Chazal permit interest.

There is extensive literature on the question of the permissibility of
borrowing money for non-commercial purposes, but the argument against
is not the one you give.  The problem is, rather, that the legal
rationale for the HI is that the payments made by the 'borrower' are
seen as the 'lender's' share of the profits, and if there's no
commercial enterprise, there are no profits.  In any event, the
Halachah here is not that clear cut [1].

[0] See Bris Yehuda Ch 40 for a discussion of Heter Iska; he begins
with a basic historical survey
[1] See ibid. Ch 38 n. 18 for an exhaustive treatment of the issue, and
a summary in Ch 40 para. 16

> Mikha'el Makovi

Yitzhak
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