Guide to Buying and Selling a Car According to Halacha – Setting the Price and Presenting the Car to the Buyer

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lemaan Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Good evening, everyone. Today we have a very interesting class. We’re going to discuss a point we haven’t talked about before, one that’s very relevant to buying and selling, and more generally as well. So first, where are we in the process? We’re talking about buying and selling a car. A car is just an example to help us learn the halachos. We chose it because there are a lot of details involved, and it’s easier to take something specific, like a car. In the previous class, we discussed how you prepare an item for sale—what you may do and what you may not do. The central idea was that a person can improve an item before selling it; that’s fine. But you may not do things that mislead people. And we said that even if you tell people the truth, there can still be a concern about the action itself. For example, mixing water into wine. Even if you tell everyone that you’ve mixed water into it, there’s a problem: someone else might go and sell it to another person. So there’s a kind of—let’s call it an inherently misleading object, something about the object itself that we call deceptive. It’s similar to weights and measures: the Torah forbids not only measuring and weighing dishonestly, but also making a weight that could be used to mislead others. Now we’re at the next stage. The seller has prepared the car for sale, and now he’s marketing it. Before he markets it, though, he sets a price. How does he set a price? We’ve spoken many times about dealing with a Jew, dealing with a non-Jew, and so on. I want to focus on a point we haven’t discussed before. I’ll use a somewhat strong expression: taking advantage of someone’s predicament. That’s wording from the more extreme side, but from the other side, you could perhaps call it seizing an opportunity. I’ll give you an example. Once I was at a hospital close to Shabbos. I wanted to get—

02:12 Speaker 2 from Kaplan Hospital to Rechovot. A taxi driver told me, “You want to go now, so close to Shabbos? If you do…” I don’t remember exactly, but he quoted me sixty or seventy shekels to Rechovot. I don’t remember what the going rates were, but that was very expensive at the time. On the one hand, he’s right: I need it urgently right now, and that’s a price that works for me right now. The question is whether he’s taking advantage of me, or taking advantage of an opportunity. There’s a business opportunity here that works for both sides. So there’s a very interesting discussion here, step by step. Let’s start with the general question of setting a price. Number one is the Alter Rebbe, in the Laws of Ona’ah and Deception. The Alter Rebbe says: “A person may not overcharge or underpay another, whether in a purchase, by buying for less than it is worth, even by a single perutah, or in a sale, by selling for more than it is worth, even by a single perutah.” In principle, then, you may neither buy below value nor sell above value, even by a single perutah.

03:24 Speaker 1 Sell for less?

03:25 Speaker 2 Buy for less. Buy from some—huh? Okay, so if we go back to the first line: a person may not take advantage of another by buying for less than it is worth, even by a single perutah. In other words, he may not mislead the other person.

03:42 Speaker 1 For less.

03:43 Speaker 2 Now, what does it mean to mislead the other person? One possibility is that you come along and say, “Listen, your item isn’t worth much. There’s no market for this car at all,” and all sorts of things like that, talking him down and bringing down the price. That’s a common thing to do. But in principle, when dealing with another Jew, is it forbidden? If this car’s market price is—right? According to what? What does a car’s price mean? Of course, there are the price guides, Levi Yitzchak and Yad2 and so on. They try to set a price based on the market. But the truth is that the price is determined by the market itself. What they publish gives you an indication. If you know the market price is high and you want to bring it down, you can ask him for a discount; that’s fine. But to come and tell him, “Listen, this car isn’t worth that; that’s not its price,” and so on—if you genuinely think so, and that’s how you see the market, fine. But if you’re just saying things to make him lower the price, that is called ona’ah. A person shouldn’t lose out by selling something for less than it’s worth, unless he wants to.

04:56 Speaker 3 That’s true.

04:58 Speaker 2 There’s negotiation, but negotiation is the next stage. In other words, we both know the market price, and now we negotiate. But I don’t tell him things that aren’t true to get him to lower it. That’s the first point: actively misleading him. Now, even passively—say he offers a price. Sometimes you see a bargain price someone has posted, and you realize he’s doing it innocently. He doesn’t know the prices, and that’s why he’s selling it for that amount. This is very hard, very hard to live up to, but as one Jew dealing with another, you can’t take advantage of that innocence. You need to tell him, “What happened? That’s cheap.” Let him know that the market price is higher. It’s hard, especially when you want to make a profit. Incidentally, it can sometimes help to ask, because sometimes a low price isn’t just a low price; there are reasons behind it. But this is what it says. The Alter Rebbe says—

06:00 Speaker 3 Every—

06:00 Speaker 2 That’s a subject in its own right. We spoke about it once. Maybe that’s an idea; perhaps we really should include it in the next class. It’s related too; there are also [unclear]. The Alter Rebbe says: “One who takes advantage in this way violates a negative commandment, as it says: ‘When you sell something to your fellow or buy from your fellow, do not wrong one another.’” It’s a Torah prohibition. Now, wait—what is “the price”? If I go north now, it will cost one amount; south, another; in a different city, or two weeks from now, or two weeks ago. The Alter Rebbe says: “He should not say, ‘Perhaps it is worth such-and-such in a certain place,’ or ‘At a certain time it will be worth that much,’ because what matters is only its place and its time.” You can’t draw comparisons like that. “I remember buying it for this much a year ago,” and so on. What matters is that time and that place. It used to be hard to check prices; today it’s easier. You can check prices online, on Zap and through all sorts of other options. Now, as for what we were discussing: a person who is, so to speak, willing to pay more. There’s a possibility that you know he knows the market price and is willing to pay more. That would seem to be fine. But what if you don’t know whether he knows the price? You don’t know. You offer him a high price because you know it’s worth it to him. It’s worth it to him. The question is whether I go by the individual—what you might call a price tailored to a particular person, based on what it’s worth to him—or whether there’s a market price and you can’t tailor prices to each person.

07:35 Speaker 3 We do that according to—

07:37 Speaker 2 According to the appearance of the person standing in front of him. So let’s see. There’s a discussion here, a truly fascinating one. I won’t start in the order shown here, because I first want to look at the view in the beraisa and the Tannaim. Number four. It was taught: Rabbi Yehudah says—this also appears in a Mishnah and a beraisa, but the beraisa gives more detail—Rabbi Yehudah says: “Even one who sells a Torah scroll is not subject to the laws of ona’ah, because there is no limit to its value.” He holds that someone selling a Torah scroll can sell it for whatever price he wants. Why? Because can you put a value on a Torah scroll? It’s the holiest thing there is, and so on. Right, so Rabbi Yehudah argues that here we don’t go by the market price. The halacha does not follow his view. Let’s continue. “An animal and a pearl are not subject to the laws of ona’ah, because a person wants to pair them.” Someone buying an animal or a pearl may have an animal whose abilities make it a perfect match for this one. He wants to put two animals to a plow, and this one suits his needs exactly. Or this pearl matches another pearl he has in his crown or his jewelry, and so on. According to Rabbi Yehudah, that’s why there is no ona’ah at all in this market: people are looking for something specific. That’s Rabbi Yehudah’s view. They said to him: “But a person wants to pair everything.” Anything in life, anything in the world, might be exactly right for someone. So why, Rabbi Yehudah? There is a market—why go by the particular person? Rabbi Yehudah explains: “It is important to him, but not to us.” He’s saying that in this case it matters a great deal to the buyer. A pearl isn’t something you find every day. I found exactly the pearl that matches what I have, so I don’t care how much I pay for it. In practice, the halacha does not follow Rabbi Yehudah. It says explicitly in the Shulchan Aruch,

09:33 Speaker 2 Even when someone sells a Torah scroll, pearls, animals, or anything else, the laws of overcharging apply. There is a market price. You can tell him, “Listen, this is the market price. I’m selling it to you for more; if you want to buy it, buy it, and if not, don’t.” That’s fine. You’ve informed him of the market price, and now you can sell it to him for whatever you want, because he knows. But you can’t say, “Because I understand that it’s worth more to him, I’m selling it to him at a higher price.” Fine. Now let’s look at something that explicitly seems to contradict this. Number two: a beraisa in Kiddushin. “This calf is for the redemption of my son,” or “This tallis is for the redemption of my son”—he has said nothing. Why is he bringing the Kohen a calf? It’s for his son’s pidyon haben. Or he brings a tallis for his son’s pidyon haben. It doesn’t count. We’ll soon see why. But if he says, “This calf, at a value of five sela, is for the redemption of my son,” or “This tallis, at a value of five sela, is for the redemption of my son,” his son is redeemed. If he specifies a value of five sela, then it’s fine. What does that mean? Is it worth five sela? Does it come to five sela? There’s a discussion in the Gemara, and I’ll give you the conclusion. The Gemara says that it actually isn’t worth that much. This calf or this head covering isn’t worth five sela. So what happens? If he says, “Take this for the redemption of my son,” there aren’t five sela here, so the son isn’t redeemed. But if he says, “Take this at a value of five sela,” then it works. What does that mean? Just because you said “five sela,” it suddenly becomes worth five sela? Let’s continue. “And this is where the Kohen accepted it as such.” The Kohen agreed that, to him, it would be worth five sela. As in the case where Rav Kahana took a head covering for a pidyon haben and said, “To me, it is worth five sela.” Rav Kahana, who was the Kohen, took a head covering for a pidyon haben. He said, “To me, it’s worth five

11:20 Speaker 2 sela,” and that child really was redeemed. Now, why was it actually worth five sela to him? Let’s continue. Rav Ashi said: “We said this only in a case like Rav Kahana, who was a distinguished man and needed a head covering for his head.” He was a Torah scholar, and he needed a head covering on his head. But not for everyone else. For an ordinary person, that head covering isn’t really worth five sela to you. Would you pay five sela for it in the market? It isn’t that important to you. Right. In other words, if a person needs some particular item to wear and can’t do without it, then getting it is worth a lot of money to him. But if it’s just something he might need or might not need, you can’t raise the price on him. Okay. Based on this, can I say, “I’m selling it, and I know this person,” or take the example I gave earlier: it’s close to Shabbos, and it’s worth seventy shekels to him to take a taxi. I don’t have to tell him, “Listen, it usually costs twenty.” I quote him that price because it’s worth it to him. The question is whether this really answers the issue. Or you’re selling someone a product and you know he needs it urgently right now, or that it’s important to him. But there’s a difference between something being important to him and his needing it urgently. We’ll see that shortly. So let’s look at number three: Chiddushei HaRitva. Yes. That is, according to the conclusion, what this beraisa means is that if he says, “Take this and redeem my son,” it isn’t worth enough. But if he says, “Take this at a value of five sela,” and to that particular Kohen it really is worth five sela because it’s important to him, then the son is redeemed. In other words... No, you’re the Kohen. Yes, so apparently, yes. Apparently, when it says “at five sela,” it means

13:24 Speaker 2 if it’s worth five sela: “Take this, because it’s worth five sela to you.” Now let’s see what the Ritva learns from this. At first glance, what the Ritva learns from this doesn’t seem to fit with the pearls we mentioned earlier. The Ritva says, number three, page five: “We learn from here that if someone sells an item to another person for six, while in the market it is worth only five, then if it is worth six to this buyer, there is no prohibition of overcharging.” If it really is worth six to that buyer—because he is someone of considerable standing and needs it very much—then it isn’t overcharging. “For we go by his valuation.” How do I know? Because look at this case, where it is worth five sela. He’s saying: the Torah says to redeem a child with five sela, not four. How did you suddenly manage to redeem him with a head covering worth less than that? Evidently, value is determined not by the market but by the individual. Accordingly, if I’m selling to an individual to whom it’s worth more, I’m sell—this is worth—no, it’s worth five; ah, here it says six. It’s worth six to him. Even though in the market it’s worth five, I sell it for six. That isn’t overcharging. Right. “For we go by his valuation.” Now let’s pause for a moment. How does that fit with the pearls? What did we say about the pearls? Their owner wants to make a matching pair, and that’s why Rabbi Yehuda holds that the laws of overcharging don’t apply to them. But the halachic ruling is that they do apply. In other words, even if you see that someone really wants to buy a pearl right now to pair it with another pearl, and to him it’s worth more, you can’t sell it to him at a higher price. There’s a market, and you go by the market, not by the individual. Here the Ritva says that we do go by the individual, and he derives it from the Gemara. So how

15:19 Speaker 2 does that fit? How? Yes, yes, yes, right, but the halachic ruling is—yes, right. There’s—let’s see in a moment. There’s a process here. Now the Ritva continues: “This, however, is where it is worth six to him to buy it in the ordinary course of things.” When I say it’s worth that much to him, I mean it’s important to him. Ordinarily, it matters enough to him that he would pay a lot for it. “But if it is worth that much to him only because he is in a tight spot”—right, it’s not that it’s really worth that much to him. He’s under pressure right now, so he’s willing to pay. “Certainly, a price agreed to under pressure is not considered an agreed price. And even if he paid the money, he can recover it from him.” In such a situation, the price was set under pressure, and that doesn’t count as an agreed price. He brings proofs. Someone was fleeing from prison and said to a ferry operator, “Take a dinar and carry me across.” The fare was actually a zuz, but he saw that the operator wouldn’t agree to take him for a zuz, so he offered him a dinar. In the end, he tells him, “I was only putting you off.” What does a ferry crossing cost? A zuz. Why did you promise me four times as much? Because I needed to get across urgently. So what? There’s a set price. And he pays him only a zuz, not a dinar. Another example is someone who became subject to yibbum, but the yavam didn’t want to perform chalitzah. So they promised him a lot of money to perform chalitzah, and in the end they tell him he gets nothing. Performing chalitzah isn’t something that costs money. You aren’t supposed to be paid for it. They misled him. Yes. Incidentally, this is also relevant in halachah. If someone is improperly pressuring you, this is a tool you have to deal with him. Yes, so there is—right, it’s misleading him. It’s misleading him, right? “And they misled him.” What? Right, that’s exactly what I was about to say. Yes. There are cases where a person hired someone and that person canceled

17:14 Speaker 2 on him at the last minute, leaving him stuck. That’s called a situation involving an irretrievable loss. For example, a wedding photographer suddenly cancels on the day of the wedding, and the person can’t find anyone else. So he can say to him, “Come, I’ll pay you double.” The photographer comes, and after he finishes, the person says, “What did we originally agree on? That’s the price.” “Why did you say double?” “Why did you cancel on me?” It’s a kind of—kind of the same idea: setting a price under pressure. Someone backs you into a corner and charges you a high price. That doesn’t mean you agreed. It isn’t considered consent. So it would seem, according to the Ritva, that if something is generally important to a person, you can sell it to him at a higher price. But if he urgently needs it, you can’t. Apparently, yes. Apparently, it’s exactly like the case of “Take a dinar and carry me across.” Right, there’s a fare. A set fare. Yes. Yes. Now let’s think for a moment. The taxi is a good example, because after the ride you can say to him, “Excuse me,” and so on. But with an object, suppose you need a hammer right now. You urgently need a hammer to drive some nail. I don’t know. It’s very urgent. Right. Now you say to him, “I want it for ten,” and he says, “Fine, I agree to sell it for ten.” What do you say to him afterward? You hand over—you pay the money, use the hammer, and then say to him, “I want the money back”? Wait, did you want to take it for yourself or not, that hammer? Do you want to rent it? That’s fine. You want to rent it for—then let’s discuss that. But do you want it for yourself, to keep for life, just because you need it at this moment? I don’t want to sell this hammer cheaply, only at a high price. You said you were willing to pay the high price, so I agreed.

18:56 Speaker 2 To sell it to you. Understand? Now pay attention. The Ketzos raises a difficulty with what we were discussing. Number five. He cites the Ritva, who says that if something is worth more to a particular person, you can sell it to him at a higher price. He says: “What he wrote—that if it is worth six to the buyer, we follow the buyer’s valuation—is difficult in light of the established ruling that even with pearls and other things a person wants to buy, the laws of overcharging apply. That implies that this is true even when the buyer himself needs it.” He understands from this that even if the buyer needs it and is, in principle, willing to pay more, you are not allowed to sell it to him at a higher price. So how does that fit with the scarf and with everything the Ritva said? Now pay attention to how the Nesivos resolves this very, very nicely. It appears below because it’s long. He says: “This is referring to...” There’s a line missing before this, but this is the point: a case where you can’t undo the transaction afterward, like with the ferry. He says this: “The very fact that the Ritva brought proof...” What were the two proofs he brought? Two proofs from irreversible situations. After the ferryman has taken you across, can you, uh, put things back the way they were? No, he’s already taken you across. Or chalitzah. Once the chalitzah has been performed, that’s it; it’s done. The Nesivos says that in a sale, too, it works like this: if you’re now buying an item to keep for yourself, they tell you, “Listen, there’s a price. Do you want it or not? It’s up to you.” After all, what do you do when someone has sold you something at an inflated price? What do you do? Someone took advantage of you and sold it to you for ten instead of seven. What can you do? You can’t tell him, “Give me back the difference.” You cancel the sale; you cancel it entirely. So now, this person here with a hammer—what did you intend? Is it important to you? Is it important to you? Did you know

20:58 Speaker 2 the market price or didn’t you? Now, according to the plain reading of the Ritva, as the Ketzos understood him, it doesn’t matter whether he knew. If it’s important to him, you can sell it to him at a higher price. That doesn’t fit with the case of the pearl. The Nesivos says that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about a case where he did know. He knew the market price. If he knew, then what was he thinking? What did he... After all, what will we do in the end? We’ll see that the market price is seven and he agreed to pay ten. What do we do? If you agreed outright to pay ten, you agreed, and that’s the end of it. If you intended to come back afterward and demand that the sale be canceled, then why did you buy it? What—what were you doing? Why did you do that? The Nesivos says we’re talking about something like the ferry, where what? Where you can’t reverse what happened. For example, medicine. A person needs medicine. Yes, he needs Acamol; he needs something urgently. Now there’s someone standing here who has the thing I urgently need. I need to use it. In principle, according to Torah law, he has to help me, because it’s urgent for me. Now, he doesn’t have to help me for free. He can sell it to me at its price. He isn’t supposed to—he isn’t supposed to take advantage of me now and sell it to me at an inflated price. But I see that he isn’t willing to sell it to me at its price; he’s trying to exploit my predicament. What do I do? Exactly what I do with the ferry. I tell him, “It’s worth ten to me; sell it to me for ten instead of six.” He sells it to me for ten. I use it, and afterward I tell him, “Please give me back the difference. You forced me to buy it at an inflated price.” The Nesivos says that’s the case we’re talking about: a situation where you can no longer turn back the clock, and from the outset you knew the price. And here there’s a difference between something that’s

22:43 Speaker 2 important to you and something you need urgently. If it’s just something that’s important to you—important, okay, keep looking. It’s important to you, but are you willing to pay more for it or not? If you knew the price and agreed to pay more, then you agreed, and that’s the end of it. So that’s the Ritva: it’s fine. He agreed to pay more because it mattered to him, but he knew. It’s not that he didn’t know. But if he needs it urgently and he’s under pressure right now, the fact that he agreed doesn’t count as agreement. It isn’t agreement. He was forced by the situation. You can see it from what he did with it. If he really needed it urgently, like the example we mentioned of [unclear].

23:26 Speaker 4 Before Shabbos.

23:27 Speaker 2 Yes, before Shabbos. That’s right. That’s called needing it urgently.

23:31 Speaker 4 So he has to buy it at the difference?

23:34 Speaker 2 In principle, yes. At whatever it costs at that time, whatever the market price is. He can’t take advantage of me and charge more because I’m under pressure.

23:43 Speaker 4 But with buying and selling, doesn’t the whole transaction get canceled?

23:46 Speaker 2 It’s supposed to be canceled, but you can’t cancel it anymore because it’s already happened. Now, with something that can be canceled, you can’t say that a person knew the market price and still claim otherwise. Once he knows the market price, that’s agreement, because what you intended does matter. You knew the market price. But if it’s something that can’t be canceled, then you can say, “I knew the market price and intended to buy it from you at the normal price, but I had no other choice because I was under pressure, so I did it.” So he wants to cancel the difference? That’s why he wants the difference back. Here is the wording of the Nesivos. We’re talking about a situation where it’s impossible... All right, first: where it’s impossible to undo the sale afterward. As with the ferry, this too is based on the claim that he was not serious and could say so to him. As we said with the ferry, he can tell him, “I wasn’t serious with you. I told you a dinar, but I only intended to pay a zuz.” Don’t you see the same thing here? “I wasn’t serious with you. I saw you were pressuring me, so I offered you a high price, but I didn’t mean it.” Let’s continue. We’ll skip to the third line, or the end of the second line: “But certainly, in a sale where the item still exists, he certainly cannot claim that he was not serious. He will have to sell it.” Why would he play games and return the item afterward? If you—if you want to buy it and return it, then return it—then don’t buy it in the first place. Why buy it and then come back to return it? So that’s according to the Nesivos. Let’s continue. On the second-to-last line, the fifth line: “And for this reason he ruled...” Maybe one line before that, toward the end, in the middle of the line. And likewise, if it’s something normal for—for a car of that model year. But if it’s something people consider a defect in that kind of product, then if it’s visible, you don’t have to disclose it. Because when a person

28:28 Speaker 2 comes and tells the buyer too many bad things about his... item, it lowers its value in the buyer’s eyes. It gives him a bad feeling. So you can—you can rely on him seeing things that really are visible. Even one step further: someone is going to have the car inspected. Later we’ll talk about what happens if he didn’t have it inspected. That’s really a question about what to do after the fact, for another class. But at the outset, if someone is going to have the car inspected, and you know there are various issues with the chassis and so on, and you kn—know that the inspection will uncover them, then you don’t have to spell them out to him. He’ll see them in the inspection. Now, if it’s the sort of thing that you believe people wouldn’t want to buy the car with, then you’d just be making him go to the trouble of having it inspected, finding that out, and ultimately not buying it. So yes, you do have to let him know. If it’s something that people aren’t so particular about, then he says he’ll discover it in the inspection. So you really don’t have to spell out everything. Now, what if a person does spell things out? Sometimes a person lists too many things, even things that aren’t there, even defects the car doesn’t have. Do I say in that case, Rava asked, that because he listed so much, “whoever adds, detracts”? So the Gemara says that—

29:44 Speaker 5 It lowers its value.

29:45 Speaker 2 What?

29:46 Speaker 5 It lowers the value of that car. He said—

29:49 Speaker 2 Right, right, he lowers the... No, but what happens is that the person makes it sound like a joke to the buyer. He starts saying, “Listen, this car has been in lots of accidents. The fuel leaks, the oil leaks,” I don’t know, all kinds of things. The buyer looks and sees that nothing is leaking, so he understands that the seller is joking with him. Then he comes back and says, “Wait, I can see that one of the things you mentioned is actually there.” The seller says, “I told you.” The Gemara says explicitly that this does not count as telling him, because he said it together with things that weren’t there. Yes. Let’s look at section seven of the Shulchan Aruch. “If someone sells another person a cow and tells him it has such-and-such visible defects, and among them mentions a defect that is not visible, and it turns out to have that invisible defect but not the others.” He listed several defects that you could see with your own eyes, plus one that you couldn’t. In the end, the only defect found was the one you couldn’t see. The Shulchan Aruch says, “This is a mistaken purchase. For example, he told him, ‘This cow is lame and blind, it bites and it lies down,’ and it turns out only to bite.” Now, the buyer can’t tell on the spot whether it bites. He has to spend some time with it, but afterward he sees it. He discovers that it bites. “This is a mistaken purchase, for the buyer can say: ‘When I saw that it was neither lame nor blind, I thought that just as it doesn’t have those defects, it doesn’t have the other defects either, and he was only saying it to put me at ease.’” As though to give me a good feeling, that I... yes, to make a kind of joke. How? Yes. I don’t know if that’s honesty, because he’s listing all sorts of things that aren’t there at all. As though to give me a good feeling, as though—

31:36 Speaker 5 The seller didn’t say that.

31:37 Speaker 2 Yes. But if it does have visible defects, whether all of them or some of them. Yes, what happens if he listed so many things? He listed several visible defects and then some more de— a list of defects that aren’t visible. In the end, he comes to you and sees that they’re all there. So the buyer says, “Listen, I didn’t think there would be so many problems. I was sure you were joking with me.” But in the end, all the problems the seller mentioned were there. That also appears in the Gemara, and there’s nothing to be done. You thought he was joking? Check it out. This wasn’t a case where there were things right in front of your eyes that you could see weren’t there. He mentioned things that were there. “And it also has a defect that is not visible—for example, it is lame and it bites, or it is blind and it lies down—this is not a mistaken purchase, for just as he accepted the visible defect, so he accepted the one that is not visible.” Now, what else does it say about doing business? There’s a nice quotation here from Hilchos Sochrim, number six. It says that a person must conduct business faithfully. Hilchos Sochrim says that conducting business faithfully doesn’t mean merely not stealing—charging him a price, uh, telling him [unclear], things like that, taking his money. Someone who does that is thoroughly wicked. Rather, it means something more. Here’s another example: “And when he says that this merchandise costs such-and-such, and that it is good, he must not lie in the slightest.” In other words, when presenting merchandise, you can present it and give accurate information. Yes, people sometimes tend to exaggerate a product’s virtues. You can say only things that are true. Now, a very common question concerns all sorts of phrases that salespeople use, when people know they don’t really mean what they’re saying. Yes, he tells him, “Listen, this is the number-one car in the world. You won’t find another like it. This is

33:35 Speaker 2 the best deal you could possibly get. I’d go for it. If I were buying, I’d buy this one,” and so on. Then why are you selling it if you would buy it? In any case, like all those people offering various deals that... What?

33:48 Speaker 6 They don’t tell you that if you want to sell, it’s not just for—

33:51 Speaker 2 “Only now at this price,” and all sorts of things like that. So, in principle, the Gemara does give an example—we’ve mentioned it many times before—of butchers who would soak meat so it would look fatty. Meaning it would look marbled, which people liked back then. Now, all the butchers do it. Does someone buying meat know? He knows everyone does it. What’s the ruling? The Gemara says: Yes, strictly speaking it’s permitted, but someone who looks after his soul should stay away from it, because there may be someone who thinks the meat really is like that. But seemingly, this isn’t only about meat or soaking meat and so on. It’s a general principle. So it applies to marketing phrases. If you say something that isn’t true, even if everyone uses that phrase, but there might be a trusting individual who thinks what you’re telling him is true, then seemingly the same rule applies: strictly speaking it’s okay, because presumably you haven’t misled him. But someone who looks after his soul should stay away from it, because this particular person might be misled by what you say. But if it’s a phrase that everyone understands, and no one, no one... For example, you tell him, “Listen, this is the best car in the country, the best in the country.” No one will actually think that it really is the best car in the country. So seemingly there’s no problem with that. And the same goes for things like saying, “Listen, this is a good deal.” These aren’t... There’s no false piece of information here. Fine, no, the deal is good. You tell him, “It’s worth it for you,” because you genuinely think it’s worth it. You tell him it’s worth it; you persuade him. And in the previous class we read from Mesillas Yesharim, where he asks: How can a person do business at all? After all,

35:33 Speaker 2 you’re stopping him from saying all sorts of things. So he says: Anything that promotes the good and honest qualities of the product is excellent. That’s how you do business. But anything that misleads the buyer, saying things that aren’t true—that’s what’s forbidden. In short, conducting business faithfully means that when one Jew deals with another, he earns a profit, but not at the other person’s expense. He profits, and both sides benefit: one buys and the other sells.