Dr. Meir Tamari is a renowned economist, Jewish scholar, and founder of the Center For Business Ethics (www.besr.org) in Jerusalem.
Dr Tamari's articles deal with issues of Business Ethics from a Torah perspective, and other topics related to personal ethics, presented in the context of the Torah Portion of the Week.
Bio
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Dr. Meir Tamari made aliya to Israel in 1950, after his studies at Yeshivah Tachkemony and receiving an undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town. He spent a decade at a religious kibbutz before moving to Jerusalem, where he worked at the Bank of Israel, Israel's Central Bank, eventually serving as Chief Economist in the office of the governor of the bank, until 1990. Dr. Tamari also lectured in Corporate Finance at Bar Illan University. In 1992 he established the Center for Business Ethics and Social Responsibility at Machon Lev - the Jerusalem College of Technology, an institution that provides high-tech education within a yeshiva framework.
During those years, Dr. Tamari wrote academic articles and books, lecturing extensively in Israel and abroad on the results of his research in economics, especially in the fields of risk evaluation, entrepreneurship, and the financing and behavior of small firms. He also served as a consultant to governmental bodies, the U.S. Small Business Association, The Royal Commission on Small Firms in the UK, the C.N.R.S in France, and the World Bank.
While in the midst of these academic and scientific pursuits, Dr. Tamari devoted much time to Torah study and education, teaching and writing on religious educational issues, Jewish social and spiritual issues, and outreach. These were based on study of Torah commentaries and Pentateuch, and also on methods of teaching the subjects with special emphasis on the issues facing us in the open society. In the main they were based on Abarbanel, the Shem Mi Shmuel and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, who all have a special significance in this regard. Recently, he published the book, "Jewish values in our Open Society, A Weekly Torah Commentary". These two areas became merged in his pioneering work in the field of Jewish perspectives and teachings in business and in economics.
Dr Tamari has lectured in Israel and throughout the Jewish world to academics, corporate groups, synagogue groups, and conventions. He also helped establish the Jewish Association for Business Ethics in the United Kingdom. Apart from writing many academic and popular articles on the subject, he has authored four books, the latest two being, "The Challenge of Wealth; A Jewish Perspective on Earning and Spending Money" and "Al Chet, Sins in the Marketplace," both published by Aronson Publishers.
