ABSTRACT
Any discussion, consultancy, or program aimed at developing a business ethics ethos must, at the outset, make it very clear what the basis is for determining whether an action is ethical or not. This chapter shows a viable Jewish perspective of the parameters needed to establish an ethical business environment. Capitalism and socialism, like the humanist ethics of the enlightenment, which form the basis for most concepts of business ethics, are in fact based on the presumption that man is able to improve himself by his own intelligence and his own innate nature. Judaism would argue that the power of the Yetzer HaRah for wealth is so great that people's goodness is not sufficient to determine their moral choice. All of the great jurists and legislators of Judaism were of great spiritual stature and indeed many of them were masters of mystical teaching Kabbalah.
