Rethinking the Economics of Frum Life
What can we do to help those struggling with the high infrastructural cost of Orthodox life?
While we cannot easily resolve the high cost of tuition or housing in our communities, how can we help individuals better navigate the world of personal finance?
These are the questions that the OU’s Department of Community Projects and Partnerships, which works to confront ongoing communal issues, is seeking to address. While these challenges do not lend themselves to simplistic resolutions, the OU is working to develop a comprehensive, holistic approach that tackles the root issues of personal finance on both the earning as well as on the expenditure side.
In these pages, we attempt to address both facets. Focusing on helping people grow their income, we convened a top-notch roundtable discussion this past May with some of the leading communal experts in career building and entrepreneurship, who shared their thoughts, wisdom and advice. We hope you find this wide-ranging, thought-provoking discussion motivating and enlightening.
In an effort to equip individuals to address their financial challenges head on, we spoke with the well-known speaker Rabbi Naftali Horowitz, author of You Revealed: A Torah Path to a Life of Success and a managing director at JP Morgan who has spent hundreds of hours guiding people toward financial freedom. In the Q & A in this issue, he stresses ideas such as budgeting, living within your means and re-examining the role of materialism. This special section also includes helpful tips about developing and honing financial skills such as saving and avoiding debt. In this season of introspection, rethinking the way we view money is a wonderful first step toward addressing our community’s affordability crisis.
In this Section:
New Initiative Targets Personal Finance Issues in the Jewish Community
Parnassah Exchange: A New Clearinghouse for the Unemployed by Steve Lipman
Money Mindset: Can We Change the Way We Think About Money? A Q&A with Rabbi Naftali Horowitz
Combating Financial Illiteracy—One Student at a Time
If You Will It, It Is Not A Dream by Aviva Engel