You Are What You Spend

This past week I saw the movie Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio. It was very good and thought provoking. The story was set in the African country of Sierra Leone in the late 1990s and in the midst of their civil war over diamonds. The plot followed the life of an African man named Solomon whose family was taken from him in the war. Solomon found a precious pink diamond and wanted to sell it, with the help of the smuggler DiCaprio, in order to get his family back.

As is well-known, some diamonds on the market today originated in war-torn countries. To help educate consumers, the designation “conflict-free diamond” was created. This is a gem whose profit was not used to fund a war and that was mined and produced under ethical conditions.

As I watched the movie, and paused to think about the source of the diamond ring that my wife wears, I found myself asking a larger question: Are we responsible for what we buy? Should we be concerned about where our items come from? Or are price and convenience the only important factors in purchasing a diamond ring, a car or a television set?

On one hand, we have to take responsibility for what we buy in order to protect ourselves and our families. The lead paint story in the news recently, where toys from China were covered in this harmful paint, shows that we must be careful in what we buy. But, does taking responsibility for our purchases reach to a higher level, perhaps becoming an ethical issue?

I believe that we are what we spend. The choices we make with our money can influence society and the larger world. The first step in taking responsibility for what we spend is to think about how an item is made. Judaism teaches us that we must seek out knowledge of how goods are produced, especially when it comes to food. When you go to the grocery store and you buy a kosher chicken, and you see the little tag on it that has an H or K, you have taken some responsibility for the way in which your food was made.

The laws of kosher slaughter say that a chicken or cow must be killed in a humane manner, with an extremely sharp knife so that the animal suffers as little as possible. Free-range chickens that are not caged by the thousands follow this same principle of treating animals well. Jews are taught to avoid the needless suffering of animals, the Jewish value of tzaar ba’alei chaim.

In the same way that we think about how our food is produced, we must contemplate how our clothing, shoes and electronics make it to the shelves. We’ve all heard the stories of how children abroad work in sweat-shops, factories that produce t-shirts and tennis shoes, where kids labor 12 hour days for little pay.

Like many immigrants who came to America in past generations, Jews know what it is like to work in sweat-shops. In 1911, the Triangle Shirt Waist factory burned down. Since the owners chose to lock the doors to prevent theft, 146 garment workers died in this fire, many of whom were Jews. As a result of this fire and other difficult working conditions, Jews got involved in the labor movement, helping to form various unions.

The Torah says that we are to protect the widow, the stranger and the orphan, the idea being that these groups have little power in society. Today we must remain aware helping those without power and protecting the rights of those workers who produce our goods anywhere in the world.

I’m not saying we need to be fanatical about this. Taking responsibility for what we purchase does not mean moving into a wooden hut and growing all our own food. But we actually have an amazing amount of power in deciding what we buy.

We can use our money to engage in tikkun olam, the Jewish value of repairing the world. The choices range from large to small, from things like socially conscious investing and purchasing conflict free diamonds to choosing paper over plastic and buying organic or kosher food rather than the regular items on the shelf.

By ourselves, we may not be able to stop a civil war or prevent global warming. But if we spend more time thinking about how we spend our money, we can make our world a little bit better of a place for everyone.