Does every man have his price?
A mong the attributes that Yisro counseled his son-in-law Moshe Rabbeinuto seek in prospective judges for Klal Yisrael was that of sonei batza which according to one view in Chazal means those who hate even their own money and certainly that of others. But why was it necessary for them to affirmatively hate money? Wouldn’t it have been sufficient for them to simply harbor no love for money and relate to it in a value-neutral way?
Is hatred of money in fact even a Torah value? Put differently can’t everything in this world be put to use appropriately in service of Hashem?
People often speak of worship of money as being the contemporary form of idolatry. The script goes like this: Silly modern man ridicules the notion that long ago people actually ascribed divine powers to idols of wood and stone and hungered to do their perceived bidding yet he fails to realize that he places wealth in the very stead of those icons of antiquity.
So far so good; there’s much truth to that narrative. But in reality there’s yet another dimension to the truism that regards pursuit of money as a form of idolatry.
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