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• Wilshire Boulevard Temple official site
• Article on Rabbi Leder
• Excerpt from More Money Than God

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I'm delighted to welcome my friend Rabbi Steven Z. Leder to this program. Rabbi Leder serves as the senior rabbi at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple here in Los Angeles. His latest book is a perfect tie-in for our series on this program on personal finance that we've been doing called, as you know, 'The Road to Wealth.' The book is titled 'More Money Than God: Living a Rich Life Without Losing Your Soul.' Is that possible?

Rabbi Steven Leder: Ha ha. Of course, it's possible.

Tavis: Is that oxymoronic?

Rabbi Leder: No. It's necessary. It's not only possible. It's necessary.

Tavis: Nice to see you.

Rabbi Leder: Nice to see you. Thank you for having me, Tavis.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you on. Now before people turn the channel right quick, not because you aren't such a handsome guy, but because they're trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing with a rabbi on my show dispensing financial advice. You'd better explain this right quick, if you want an audience for the next 20 minutes here.

Rabbi Leder: Well, because of my position as a rabbi and because of the kind of congregation that I have, which has everybody from the highest to the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in our society, I see on the couch in my office, people come there, and they spill forth their money problems: the challenges they face trying to raise children in a culture of excess, the challenges they face in a marriage vis-a-vis money, things like prenuptial agreements, things that lead to a breakdown in trust in a relationship. I have parents coming to me with grown children to share their problems with these grown children, who always seem to need money. And, of course, I have people in my congregation, like there are all over this country and all over this world, who live and battle against a sense of envy and jealousy and covetousness for what others have. I mean, that's a struggle for all of us. We all live in a world now where it's hard not to confuse self-worth and net worth, and it's hard not to confuse what we need with what we want.

Tavis: Sounds like a simple question. Let me ask anyway, 'cause I think it's worth probing. How do you define the distinction, the difference between self-worth and net worth? Because, to your point, it is--that line seems to be more blurred now than ever before.

Rabbi Leder: I think it is blurred, but yet we all really--if we can step back--this book is essentially about learning how to step back for a moment and think more clearly about the role money plays in your life. One of my favorite quotes is by Santiano, who said, "I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't the fish."

Tavis: Yeah. Ha ha ha!

Rabbi Leder: You know? And what he means by that is we're so immersed in our own culture, in our own environment, that we lose our perspective, but we do know better. When we say of another person in our society, "What's he worth?" everyone's mind goes to the same place, which is the bottom line, of course. And yet, if we can step back, we do know better. All of us know better that self-worth and net worth really have nothing to do with each other, and, by the way, and it's cliche to say it, but it's true, we all know that money and happiness are not necessarily a direct correlation, one to the other.

Tavis: But I don't want to give the impression, and I don't that you're giving the impression, that there's something wrong with money. I mean, if there's nothing wrong with money, then what's wrong with the way we value money or the way we use money or treat money, if there's nothing wrong with money in and of itself?

Rabbi Leder: Because money by itself is neutral.

Tavis: Hmm.

Rabbi Leder: Money is neither good nor bad. It's what we do with it, and it's how much of our life we are willing to barter away in the pursuit of it. It's how much of our morality are we willing to barter away in pursuit of it. How much of our freedom are we willing to give up in pursuit of money? Money itself is neutral, like nuclear science is neutral. It can create bombs, and it can create nuclear medicine. Money is merely a tool, and we have to decide, every single one of us, to which purposes we are going to put that tool to work.

Tavis: How do you think most of us form our opinions about money? Do we get that from the media? Do we get it from our family? Do we get it from society at large? Where do we get these--I mean, I'm glad you've written this book to set us straight, but where do most of us get our definition, our value of what money is or ought to be?

Rabbi Leder: Well, the answer's yes, yes, and yes. Yes, we get it from our childhoods. When I speak about the book and I ask people to go back to their earliest childhood memories about money, they do it rather easily. And often they're negative memories. They're memories of either a sense of lack. They're memories of a sense of oppression, of the way in which adults use money to manipulate children to do things or not do things. It was used as a means of status between one child and another, the kid down the block, the kid on the bus. So, yes, it absolutely comes from our childhood, and some of us grew up as children listening to adults fight about money. Family businesses, listening to, you know, our father and our uncle fight about money, listening to our grandfather and our father fight about money. Listening to our parents argue about money. Was money a control, a means by which dad tried to control mom or a means by which mom tried to get back at dad? You know, there are all these unspoken agreements in marriages, you know. OK, I'll ignore his workaholism, but he has to ignore my shopaholism. So, yes, children learn an awful lot about money, and I talk in the book about giving children experiences with money early on that are positive and meaningful and that teach children that money is a limited resource. I interviewed an addict in the book. He was addicted to being an important person. That was his addiction. Pretending to be more important than he was through money. He went to jail for kiting checks. And he said to me...

Tavis: A lot of us do that. We just don't go to jail. A lot of us are fronting and flossing. We're just not going to jail for it.

Rabbi Leder: He did it in a big way, and he said to me, instant gratification wasn't quick enough for me. Instant gratification wasn't quick enough for me. Now, do we want to raise children to have that kind of problem? No. So, yes, it comes from our childhood, and, yes, we need to be very thoughtful, but it also comes from the media around us. You know, the title of the book, 'More Money Than God,' is really meant to teach us how we have transposed these 2 values, and if you look at an advertising slogan--pick any company you want--to see how we put our faith in material goods and things. Take out the name of the product and put the word 'God' in and see how it works. You're in good hands with...God, right? Like a good neighbor...God is there. Right? God, job number one, right? God, a better idea. But instead, even in our mass-marketing culture, we begin to deify things rather than deity.

Tavis: You mentioned children and the impressions that are formed around money in our youth. You write pretty openly in this book to your kids.

Rabbi Leder: Yes.

Tavis: To Anna--To Hannah, rather, and Aaron.

Rabbi Leder: Yes.

Tavis: Why was that important for you to do?

Rabbi Leder: It's important to me because I believe in our society standing up against materialism or the misuse of money as one of the last taboos. If my child came home and told me a racist joke, I would correct my child instantly, as would most, I think, of your listeners. If my child came home and told a sexist joke to his mother, as my 15-year-old son tried to do the other day, right? Or did.

Tavis: And Betsy said what?

Rabbi Leder: Betsy set him straight. We set our kids straight when they come home and express racism or sexism. Why don't we set our children straight when they come home and express materialism? Why is materialism the last acceptable "ism" in our culture?

Tavis: Maybe--let me ask you rhetorically. Maybe because we don't know. Maybe because we know that racism is wrong. We know that sexism is wrong. Materialism, we don't see as wrong. What's wrong with money? What's wrong with wanting more? What's wrong with wanting stuff?

Rabbi Leder: Well, I'll give you a simple example. First of all, what's wrong with it is what it leads to, is the confusion or the belief that your outer life really says something about who and what you are. And the confusion of an outer life for an inner life. An outer life, a rich outer life will never provide you with a rich inner life. The philosopher Jacob Needleman equates it to trying to eat a picture of food. We begin to fool ourselves into believing these things are important, these things are who we are, and I don't want my children to fall into that trap. Furthermore, I want them to use money responsibly regardless of how much they have. When my daughter comes home and says her friend's daddy has 4 cars, I think I have a right and an obligation, as a parent and as a member of this society that wants to encourage people to be better, not just better off--I have an obligation to say to her, "Hannah, how many cars can a person drive at one time? Hannah, let's sit down with a calculator and let's just think about how many homeless people your friend's daddy could feed with what those 3 other cars he can't drive would add up to." I think that's our obligation as parents. Why are we afraid to do that? I don't think we should be.

Tavis: OK. I was with you in the book until I got to the part in the book where you seem to suggest, uh, to a guy like me who is not yet married that if I'm even thinking about a prenup, then maybe marriage isn't what I oughta be thinking about.

Rabbi Leder: Well, maybe marriage to that particular person isn't what you should be thinking about.

Tavis: I want you to clarify that. Ha ha ha! 'Cause I'm like, are you telling me that I shouldn't...

Rabbi Leder: I think there are rare cases where a prenup is appropriate. For example, a second marriage where an elderly person wants to make sure his or her children, uh, receive the benefit of the estate, et cetera. But, in my experience as rabbi, and I've done hundreds and hundreds of weddings, prenups are always ugly, with rare exception, and they indicate some fundamental lack of trust or the inability to have a trusting conversation about the money topic. You need to have that conversation, but if you are betting on failure going into the relationship, I think you have some serious questions to ask each other.

Tavis: But if you could have a conversation about money and there are a number of things that come out of that--if we decide to do a joint checking account and a separate account. We decide we're gonna do x-y-z, we're gonna save this amount--whatever we...

Rabbi Leder: Work it out.

Tavis: We have our money conversation and decide a number of things, if a prenup is one of those things that both parties agree to as a part of that understanding, you still think prenup's a bad idea because it portends something negative about the marriage?

Rabbi Leder: Yes, and 9 out of 10 times, despite the goodwill of each party going into this negotiation, it leaves a lot of deep wounds.

Tavis: See, I'm done talking to you. You can leave now.

Rabbi Leder: Ha ha ha!

Tavis: Ha ha ha! I was liking you till you got to that point.

Rabbi Leder: Well, you know, Tavis, the--the ideal, of course, would be for you to meet a person in whom you trust so deeply that this wouldn't even be a fear or a shred of doubt in your mind. A person with whom you're willing to get into that boat, just the two of you, and sail out into that sea and know--and know that you have each other's back. Isn't that what you want?

Tavis: Now I feel like I'm sitting in your couch in your office and at my mother's kitchen table all at the same time. So, I'm out of time.

Rabbi Leder: Good for you.

Tavis: Ha ha ha ha! Nice to see you.

Rabbi Leder: Thank you.

Tavis: It's a great book, 'More Money Than God,' written by the Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.