Moses Pava Offers Spiritual Tools to Stimulate Conversation About Business Ethics Dr. Moses Pava, noting what he calls “huge, huge ethical lapses” in the business world, is using his latest book to help people of all faiths talk about the dilemma. Pava, the Alvin Einbender Professor of Business Ethics at Sy Syms School of Business, says he is hoping that his newly published Jewish Ethics as Dialogue: Using Spiritual Language to Re-Imagine a Better World (Palgrave MacMillan) will give people the tools to talk to one another and think more systematically about the failures. The tools in his book come from traditional and modern Jewish texts, from scholars such as Rabbis Joseph Soloveitchik and Irving Yitz Greenberg, as well as secular views from people such as the 20th-century American philosopher and activist John Dewey. Greenberg and Dewey are two major proponents of the new self-conscious religious attitude known as “intelligent spirituality”—an idea that, Pava writes in the book, provides a useful set of precise criteria to evaluate some of the many changes that are occurring in corporate America and that are defended under the banner of spirituality in business. Pava wants the texts he cites in his book to provide the centerpiece in discussions that lead to a more ethical way of conducting businesses and lives. These are discussions he imagines can be held in formal settings, such as corporate meetings, or informal places, such as synagogues or Jewish community centers. From these discussions, ethical norms are generated and authenticated, Pava says. “I am trying to provide not only a way for Jewish people to talk about ethics, but for people from other traditions to apply the method to their own tradition,” says Pava, who has taught for two decades at Yeshiva University and is the author of several books on the religion-business connection. While Pava surely wants to see adults change their ways, one of the book’s goals is to help students engage in ethical dialogues. In the appendix, he provides an open letter inviting them to participate. “I hope people remain open-minded, that some percentage of adults continues to learn throughout their lives,” he says. “But the most efficient and appropriate way to allocate a scarce amount of time is to engage students to effect some kind of change. “If we start much earlier, even before college, we have a much better chance of having an impact on people.” Pava puts the onus on people like himself—educators and those witnessing the downward spiral in business—to push for an improvement in the ethical culture. “We have to be more aggressive in challenging people doing questionable activities, but in a respectful way,” the Sy Syms professor says. “If you are a witness to immoral activity and didn’t say anything, now you have a degree of responsibility after the fact.”