Last week, Aaron Feuerstein, the aptly named "mensch" of Malden Mills in Massachusetts, died at the age of 95.  I mentioned Mr. Feuerstein because in a time when corporations, faced with financial challenge, are all too quick to shrink their workforces, did just the opposite:  he retained and actually grew his work force.  Financial stability, he often remarked, is not worth more than workers' livelihoods.

    Words well said.  Capitalism can be a very rapacious enterprise, elevating self-interest and profit above every other consideration.  Although, broadly speaking, capitalism has produced much material gain for many people around the planet, its essential worldview also makes it fertile ground for human exploitation.  Too many people fall through the cracks, abandoned and forgotten.

    When in the Eighties countless domestic clothing manufacturers shut down their factories in the States to pursue low wage help in other parts of the world, laying off thousands and thousands of people in the process, Mr. Feuerstein did not.  He believed in his people, he cared about his people.  And he cared about them more than trying to satisfy shareholder demands. He stayed right where he was.

    And Malden Mills prospered greatly.  In the Jewish worldview, a "mensch" is a person among persons, a person who stands above others in his pursuit of what is right (this in sharp contrast to Friedrich Nietzsche's "ubermensch," the one who cast all else aside to pursue his personal vision).  it was Mr. Feuerstein's deeply held Judaic belief in doing good deeds before all else that impelled him to look after his workers.  He believed in a God who cared profoundly about his human creation.

    As should we.  Capitalism without moral foundation is, in the big picture, worth very little.  Indeed, it misses the biggest point:  to reverence who and what God has made.

    Rest well, Aaron Feuerstein.