Q&A: Forgery and Destruction of Banknotes from the Perspective of Jewish Law
Forgery and Destruction of Banknotes from the Perspective of Jewish Law
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Is creating a perfect copy of a 100-shekel bill and using it forbidden from a halakhic perspective? And if so, which prohibition is being violated here? (Aside from the law of the land.)
And if there is a prohibition here, would destroying my own 100-shekel bill be considered the opposite act to creating a forgery, and therefore have something of the character of charity to the public from a halakhic perspective?
Best regards,
Answer
Aside from the law of the land, I do not see a prohibition. In a general sense, it lowers the value of money, but one bill is insignificant. The categorical imperative, of course, forbids doing this even if it is only one bill. But I do not think there is a defined category of halakhic prohibition here.
Why would destroying a bill be charity to the public? I am not an expert in economics, but if that were the case, the government would destroy bills for the public’s benefit. The amount they print is presumably the amount they want there to be.
Discussion on Answer
Yes, indirect causation of damage. Exempt under human law but liable under the law of Heaven.
As for destroying a bill, I think it is not so simple. The fact is that the state forbids destroying bills (it is a criminal offense). But as stated, I do not understand this well enough.
Maybe counterfeiting bills also has an aspect of harming the state’s intellectual property? Or deception, according to your approach?
Not likely. There is no special idea here. If you copied it onto paper that did not look like a bill, nobody would care.
If it involved many bills, would there be some prohibition here?
As for destroying a bill, just as you said that creating a bill out of thin air lowers the value of money, so too the opposite action of creating a bill—which is destroying a bill—raises the value of money. In other words, my purchasing power went down by 100 shekels, and the purchasing power of the public as a whole (except for me) went up by 100 shekels. Regarding what you said about the government, destroying government bills really does transfer money from the state treasury to the public, except that this transfer is one without criteria distinguishing between people who need charity more and those who need it less, so governments usually do not act that way. (In fact, it even slightly favors the rich, because strengthening the purchasing power of the shekel by X percent affects people who have more shekels more.) Governments prefer to transfer in a more selective way to people who need it.