Reply To: paying interest to banks & ribbis?

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#892292
akuperma
Participant

Some people make a point of not using credit cards (using a debit card than can handle credit transactions instead), or taking out loans. It is possible to survive without a mortgage, student loans, car loans, credit cards, etc. Also one probably doesn’t want to ever own stock. One can assume that in most corporations have Jewish owners (shareholders) and customers (who routinely buy on credit, with interest).

This limits investment opportunities to buying unleveraged commodities or small businesses that don’t engage in credit transactions (as a borrower or lender).

I believe most orthodox Jews hold that corporations aren’t people, so there’s no problem, or that our “money” is really a negotiable security of no set value, and that the halachas apply only to the sorts of money they had in the past, which were coins with intrinsic value (paper money, and in particular paper money backed only faith in the government, is a new invention).