The economics of religion, Jewish survival, and Jewish attitudes toward competition in Torah education

This paper examines the attitude of Jewish law to competition in light of t he economist's understanding of the benefits of competition and the benefic iaries from intervention in the competitive process. The punchline of this paper is simple. Although Judaism has used a whole host of restrictions on competition and has had its share of legislation to promote private interes ts, there has been one area that has generally been a consistent exception to impediments to competition-the teaching of Torah. This exception is all the more remarkable because those who were in a position to influence the l egislation often stood to benefit from such restrictions. From this stress on teaching, we show that the foundation was laid for the survival and perp etuation of Judaism.