Bank Accounts
Nesvisky, Matthew
BANK ACCOUNTS While politics grabs the headlines, life goes on . . . sort of. moment's regular correspondent reports on banking (the non-West kind) in Israel. Item: My wife was required to open...
...Or he can go to a hotel desk or to a money changer and get the same rate or better and a handshake in 30 seconds, no questions asked...
...Equally significant, Israel's Examiner of Banks has pointed out that Israel is the only country in the world in which the financial institutions' balance sheets have increased at a rate more than double that of the country's Gross National Product...
...Anyway, I paid the two lirot—twigging only an hour later that with one lira I could have left the account open...
...Dunno...
...It's not uncommon for an Israeli to have five or six accounts...
...The lady in front of me has finished another yard of sleeve...
...I returned to the bank when the card was ready, and the clerk handed it to me, whispering my personal mantra, the secret code number I was to use for operating the machine...
...Jews created the Christmas Club and crucified Chrysler and supply all those toasters and other premiums to the savings and loan associations...
...Just to see all that marble, chromium, fake-wood veneer, potted plants, rubber stamps, quadruplicated carbon forms, smug smiles—to see it all go sky-high...
...But of course the shekels devalue every day...
...And the natives don't seem to have it much easier...
...But for the sake of journalistic accuracy I feel I should really tell them that I'm a professional bank client...
...The most grandiose of these emporia have that shopping mall glitter and sterility born of an architectural style I can only call Bauhaus whorehouse...
...I understand you've closed your account with us...
...A natural symbiosis of the ecosystem, right...
...Well, I may be growing with Hapoalim, but not quite at the same rate, when you consider that they pay six percent on a positive bank balance, but take 82 percent on a debit up to eight thousand shekels, and 130 percent thereafter...
...Not to worry—do nine checks on rubber every 90 days, then turn to your next checking account and start all over again...
...I ponder...
...In short, the brains behind the banks...
...An Israeli bank won't allow you to deposit dollars in your own foreign currency account...
...And the tellers behind the computer terminals accordingly are screwing the clients with the appropriate heartless efficiency...
...Oh, no, the bank verified the bills forme...
...The woman looked at me as if I were a total toad...
...Jews also manipulate the International Monetary Fund, regulate interest Matthew Nesvisky, editor and feature writer for The Jerusalem Post, is a moment contributing editor...
...Feeling like a pupil summoned to the principal's office, I drag-footed my way to the manager's cubicle...
...At the end of last year, for example, Bank Hapoalim put on the market 2.3 million new shares, and on the first day of trading orders came in for 12.8 million shares—an oversubscription of more than fivefold...
...In every new neighborhood, housing development, residential quarter, development town, settlement, moshav—even before the infrastructure is complete, before the schools are built, before the clinic is staffed, before the supermarket is planned—in fact the very first thing in every new shopping center, bus station, office building, on both sides of the Lebanese border at Rosh Hanikra and even with mobile units pursuing the IDF into the battlefield—you guessed it!—branches of your local bank...
...It's one of those many biblical precepts with no obvious rational explanation...
...Item: If a tourist wants to change dollars in Israel, he can go to a bank, stand in line for half an hour, sign numerous forms, have his passport examined, wait while the transaction is recorded and stamped and poked onto the computer and otherwise blow his morning...
...Let's see, if I could coat my documents with Composition II plastic explosive, then when the bank clerk slams down his rubber stamp— Ah, but there is no bank clerk...
...So it goes...
...Jews came up with the first checkbook, the second mortgage, the third quarter and the foreclosure...
...I grew up thinking that was perfectly normal...
...With no basis for comparison, the natives just put up with it all...
...All I wanted to do was stick the dollars into my account...
...Hereditary, no doubt...
...Monetary mavens, specie specialists, fiduciary foxes...
...Okay, fine...
...The banks are the backbone and the bankroll of the Jewish nation...
...Lending money is supposed to be an act of chesed (benevolence...
...Sure, I tell them, same as we used to get manganese and maize at New York's Chemical Corn Exchange Bank...
...Yeah, but actually I was thinking of selling my set—" A look of terror crosses Goldwasser's face...
...Counters one through eight remain cobwebbed...
...the sweater is going to fit King Kong...
...My old man in truth was one of those fellows so traumatized by the Great Depression that ever after he kept no bank account, much less a credit card...
...But the banks of course are not raking in the shekels solely by hustling securities...
...In addition to all the things your friendly bank in the U.S...
...technically this is illegal, but it is widely accepted nonetheless...
...Impossible, said the university, we send paychecks only to banks...
...Goldwasser recently sold his car to a gazlan who, like my old man, apparently distrusted banks and paid my friend $4,000 in American greenbacks...
...Item: They charge you when you draw your money out...
...Goldwasser sighs and clutches his foreign currency behind me...
...They help build the country...
...I am, in point of fact, actually writing this very article while waiting in line at a central bank branch in Jerusalem's Zion Square...
...But the bank won't let...
...All too typical...
...The banks are also heavily into real estate, insurance and construct ion...
...Anyway, it's time for my tea break...
...In this land of multiple monopolies (one cigarette manufacturer, one dairy cooperative, one national bus service), Israeli banks are fiercely competitive...
...Make every bank client a partner...
...Despite her repeated efforts, more than a year later she has not succeeded in closing this empty and unused account...
...All I know is I'm fuming in this damn bank queue because there are 12 teller windows and eight of . them are closed...
...Thus when I first came to Israel in 1965 to teach at Hebrew University, the payroll office at that great institution startled me by asking where I'd like my salary deposited...
...The banks responded by forming holding companies for these activities—and floating new issues to further fill their coffers...
...The result is that the banks are booming as never before...
...I suggested my front pants pocket, in bills and coinage...
...Or, if I was entirely out of my mind, I could sell the bank the dollars and get shekels...
...Potential...
...Hapoalim, by the way, showed earnings of more than $100 million for 1981, the first Israeli bank ever to earn that much in a 12-month period...
...Yes, my secret desire is to dynamite a bank...
...The heter isskah of course also keeps the bank kosher...
...Whatever the case, Israeli investors remain convinced that bank shares are safe as, well, as money in the bank...
...I'm not jealous, mainly because my kopp can't cope with concepts like 12.8mil-lion share orders or 143 percent annual profit...
...But where Israeli banks once commonly had a sort of mom-and-pop grocery store feel about them, most in this age of mega-growth are about as cheery as oncology clinics...
...We're waiting...
...Write some checks...
...Fantasy...
...Oh, just waiting to pay my TV license fee...
...Heth: "The performance of such a variety of functions creates a host of potential conflict-of-interest problems...
...The woman in front of me is cable-knitting a sweater...
...Banks...
...Each time an Israeli opens a checking account, joins a savings plan, takes a loan—or for that matter each time he invests in goverment bonds or participates in the compulsory defense loans to the state—he signs a document containing the heter isskah and becomes a partner...
...In fact the first Jewish bank in this country preceded the first Jewish town: Bank Leumi likes to boast that its predecessor, the Anglo-Palestine Company, actually financed the initial construction of Tel Aviv in 1909...
...They aren't the only ones...
...And we're all aggravated...
...For this service, I was informed, there would be a charge of two lirot (a lira, for the uninitiated, was the predecessor of the shekel...
...So I had to open a Jewish checking account...
...Line advances one step...
...You get the picture...
...I was sure he would produce a .357 Magnum...
...Let's admit at the outset, however, that I am prejudiced...
...Let the Jewish geniuses, deep in their "labyrinth of mysteries," build a banking empire...
...more than 100 of these have sprouted up in recent years, and last year not one showed a loss...
...That's the rule...
...Still waiting in line...
...A law was finally passed at the end of 1981 allowing the banks to "blacklist" for one year account holders who write more than 10 bad checks within any 90-day period...
...The latest advance in this direction is the automatic bank teller built into the wall outside the bank...
...Against the rules," says Goldwasser...
...Counter ten's teller is taking tea and Danish...
...The woman in front of me is still clacking away with her needles...
...We had a brochure that explains it all, but we're out of them temporarily...
...But hold on now...
...I met Goldwasser in the bank this morning as he was coming in to deposit this sizeable amount in his foreign account...
...Behind me, taking the place of the old gentleman who died in the line of duty (they also serve who stand and wait) slips my friend Goldwasser...
...I do not exaggerate when I say that about 50 percent of the time the machines are inoperative for one reason or another...
...Other bank come-ons include checks printed with your name, address, even a picture of your punim...
...Only if I'd been abroad within the last 30 days, then I could deposit the dollars, and then only up to $3,000, and then if I'm still within my first 20 years in the country, and then if, if, if, if...
...According to the magazine, Hapoalim profits for 1981 rose a staggering 143 percent over the previous year...
...I seem to spend a good portion of my working day queueing up in one bank or another...
...One of the ironies of the Likud's "economic revolution" was the legalizing of foreign bank accounts for Israelis...
...Last summer Business Week ranked the Histadrut's Bank Hapoalim (the Workers' Bank) as the second largest company in terms of revenues and profits in the entire Middle East, coming in behind Kuwait Petroleum and with Bank Leumi easing in at third...
...You just push the buttons you need," she sniffed, unhelpfully...
...it was the revelation that Yitzhak Rabin had such an account in Washington that led to his resignation from the premiership and to the elections that ushered in the Begin era...
...Back to objective reportage...
...Actually I came to like my little neighborhood bank near the university...
...Can't leave my desk," she snapped...
...The aggravation comes from the amount of time I spend in banks...
...I can feel the varicose veins popping out on my calves...
...Israeli bank branches have become common sights overseas...
...Yes, you can place orders to buy and sell shares in the razzle-dazzle Tel Aviv Stock Exchange through your local bank...
...I stare at him, incredulous...
...The Likud's hope of making Israel a banking center to rival Switzerland hasn't quite come true yet, but they're working on it...
...I get none of these things...
...Mail this article...
...Foreign Currency won't take my foreign currency," says Goldwasser...
...In Israel— nu, so what are you going to do...
...Retirement fund for one-legged vegetarian immigrants moving into Gush Etzion...
...Their growth has been especially spectacular since November 1977, when the new Begin government greatly liberalized the currency control laws—laws instituted by the British Mandate authorities during World War II and which the subsequent Labor governments found convenient to keep on the books...
...Jews...
...Added Dr...
...The wheels of finance have ground to a halt...
...These include short-, mid- and long-term schemes designed for kids, soldiers, students, young marrieds, pensioners and those hoping to scrape up enough for their own apartment some day...
...Yet I have frequently entertained the notion of blowing up a bank...
...Nor am I the only one bewildered...
...I've lived in Israel a dozen years and I understand no more about Israeli banking procedures than the fellow who just stepped off the plane...
...And seeing as how bank stocks are snapped up by the public, the thinking seems to be, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em...
...In Tibet they'll take dollars...
...I can let you have these at truly remarkable prices...
...Such was the case right up to the Labor defeat by the Likud in May 1977...
...Charges were later leveled of bank manipulation...
...They're afraid the bills are counterfeit...
...In front of me the woman is still knitting...
...They operated such non-banking activities outright until about two years ago,-when a "divestiture law" required them to shed such businesses...
...Economic experts, that's the ernes...
...It is an established fact that Jews control all the world's banks—including the World Bank...
...Nu, and that's why I'm standing in line now...
...And although economists predict that such practices, coupled with the inflation rate, the shaky shekel and the overheated stock exchange, could all mean a financial collapse, it hasn't collapsed yet...
...Everybody must get charged...
...I had never spoken to a bank manager before...
...I thanked her for all that and then asked for some instructions on how to use the damn thing, for from what I had observed one had to be a fairly accomplished pianist to work the keyboard...
...In fact, if it didn't sound so close to the slogan of a certain cleaning powder, that would be a terrific line for an Israeli bank: "Hasn't Collapsed Yet...
...In Antarctica the penguins will let you deposit American bills...
...Only in Israel the miles are all kilometers, and if we have Jewish banking geniuses, they seem to have a genius for hiding the fact...
...Says Jerusalem rabbi Rafael Katzenellenbogen, a scholar in talmu-dic law concerning the borrowing and lending of money: "The prohibition of interest-taking is not a simple commandment...
...Meir Heth, chairman of the exchange, recently pointed out that the banks "are simultaneously (a) underwriters, (b) broker-dealers, (c) investment advisors, (d) managers of mutual funds and retirement funds, (e) investors on their own account and (f) issuers of their own securities...
...Which reminds me that tourists are forever asking if they get some sort of special discount at the Israel Discount Bank...
...Meanwhile, according to Bank Examiner Oded Messer, the number of rubber checks written in Israel has reached epidemic proportions in recent years—roughly eight percent of all those written...
...Gotta go out and get my sandals re-soled...
...And if the bank somehow isn't making a profit, the "interest" paid out is compensation for the client's faith in the bank...
...The government encourages these savings plans as an anti-inflationary means of sopping up liquid assets, a reasonable notion when you consider that the Finance Ministry in recent months has been pumping as much as three billion shekels into the economy each month...
...Like everyone else in an Israeli bank queue (bank queue very much), I'm saving a place in line for someone who's been standing in line at another department...
...I have here," he twinkled conspiratorial ly, "lovely souvenir medallions of the War of Independence, the Sinai Campaign, the Eichmann trial...
...Last day...
...Here you can draw cash, make deposits, pay bills...
...On any given day Israelis write between 300,000 and 400,000 checks...
...When people ask what I do in Israel, I tell them I'm a journalist...
...Although it should be clear by this time that when it comes to the h#nk, I'm something of a crank...
...Meanwhile, I may have a friend at Chase Manhattan, but I'm convinced the Israeli banks are out to get me...
...Just to make a statement...
...Where was I. . . . Ah, yes...
...I tell this anecdote to illustrate the heimish qualities Israeli banks used to have...
...Simple...
...So the heter isskah is a vital instrument for allowing Jews to function within modern banking practice...
...Moshe complained about this to the bank manager, who simply shrugged and said: "Okay, tell the clerk I said to charge you at the two-shekel rate...
...This matter of interest is indeed interesting, and perhaps here more than anywhere else the Jewish banking genius manifests itself...
...But they seem to think the best way to attract customers is by opening more and bigger bank branches...
...The line moves forward two paces...
...Paid yours yet...
...But no...
...Bank Leumi's motto, crooned with depressing regularity right before every hourly news broadcast, is "People Serving People...
...Then there are the special limited checking accounts for teenagers—advertised on garish billboards by pop stars and the like...
...Dr...
...Knitting needles flash in front of me...
...does, Israeli banks serve as collection agencies for certain taxes, disburse National Insurance Institute (Social Security) payments and—you're going to like this—function as the nation's stock brokers...
...Meanwhile, with the Likud's free float (read constant-drop) of the shekel, the banks have been protecting their assets in the stock market...
...This is extremely interesting when you consider that Dr...
...My bank statement, as it were...
...Alignment Member Moshe Shahal, for example, described local banking practices as "a labyrinth of mysteries...
...Your reporter asks his mates to save his place in line...
...Goldwasser has now returned from Foreign Currency, looking glum...
...As for my resentment—well, many people fantasize about pulling a bank robbery...
...Oh, yes, where once only a decade or so ago every bank transaction was still recorded, Bob Cratchett-style, in laborious longhand, Israeli banks are now a silicon chip off the'old block...
...Come Grow With Us...
...Then hurry back and wait...
...A check they'll take, any amount...
...Adding incest to injury, holders of these accounts are entitled to discounts on records and tickets to rock concerts...
...What then are our friends at Israeli financial institutions to do...
...Item: My wife was required to open an additional checking account at a bank where she normally does no business simply to pay the Jerusalem municipal taxes on an art studio she had rented...
...They should only be healthy...
...In any event, the board of directors of the Tel Aviv exchange isn't likely to limit the role of the bank as stock broker-advisor-issuer of shares, since the board is made up mostly of bank executives...
...rates, predetermine the prime, mete out the mortgages, finesse the Federal Reserve, underwrite OPEC and bankroll David Rockefeller...
...It is well known that the Jews—the Jews!—invented banking...
...I'm speaking from the perspective of a mere wage-earner whose only interest in banking is prompt and efficient service on his simple transactions, a smile from the teller and a lollipop for his kid...
...Just like chicken soup and matzah balls...
...And surely some little neighborhood branches still exude what we like to think of as the warm Jewish atmosphere...
...Counter number nine's teller is busy chatting on the phone with her girlfriend in Afula...
...And consider this: I allow the bank to hold all my savings, my monthly paycheck is deposited here automatically without my ever seeing it, this bank has the mortgage on my flat—AND YET THE UNTRUSTING BASTARDS CHAIN THEIR BALLPOINT PENS TO THE COUNTER...
...Although if you've seen Tel Aviv lately, you wonder what they're boasting about...
...The old gentleman behind me unfortunately has expired, and the chevrah kadishah has whisked away the remains...
...Well, a myth is as good as a mile...
...Before that, however, the bank teller said the manager would like to speak with me...
...the automatic teller is out of order and two flesh-and-blood tellers are trying to fix it...
...What...
...The bank then is not paying you "interest" on your deposit, God forbid, and thus forcing you to violate Halachah, but is paying you, its partner, a share of the bank's profits...
...Nesvisky: Yeah, in my checkbook...
...Everyone does it, everyone understands, kol yisrael mishpachah achat...
...During a recent Knesset debate, numerous members complained that the banks are secretive about their inner workings, their services and their fees...
...Not me...
...The banks plant branches around the country faster than the Jewish National Fund can stick saplings in the sand...
...Goldwasser and I of course are relative newcomers to Israel and thus are simply paranoid about the banks here...
...Until the end of the year, when I went to close my account...
...His most recent article in moment, "Conversion Play," appeared in January-February 1983...
...Goldwasser clutches his packet of cabbage to his chest and chews his lip...
...Let's give credit to Israel's banks—even if they won't extend credit to me...
...Thus when you deposit money in an Israeli bank, you are not temporarily lending cash to the bank, as you would be doing at, say, Citicorp, but you are becoming a shareholder, albeit a non-voting and preferably silent member of the firm...
...For God's sake, whatever you do, don't accept dollars...
...Nesvisky, do you write any fiction...
...Nobody except those few remaining old-line Socialists in the country seems to complain about the banks having such a ball on the exchange...
...That of course is outside of the paper you hang on your overdraft—whatever the limit the bank allows you—and the scrip you date a month in advance...
...Or I could purchase a $4,000 bank check if I wanted to send the money abroad to somebody, which I don't, and anyway that check would cost me around $50...
...Interviewer: Besides journalism, Mr...
...The manager waved all this away and abruptly pulled open his desk drawer...
...It is common practice to post-date checks, in the sanguine expectation that your salary will catch up with your checks in a month or so...
...When a panic hit the Tel Aviv exchange in late January this year, around 150 stocks plummeted— but not those of the commercial banks...
...In addition to competing for the most grandiose premises and the gaudiest electronic gadgetry, the banks also try to attract customers with a baffling variety of savings plans...
...Counter eleven's teller is off filing all those quadruplicated carbon papers...
...And they charge you when you put your money in...
...The elderly man behind me is using a battery-operated electric shaver...
...A few years later, when she was moving to a larger studio, she paid up the taxes on the first place, got a document from the bank manager stating that the account was cleared and asked that her account be closed...
...Each comes with its own genuine olive wood stand...
...Under the partnership arrangement, the income gained by a lending institution is not considered by Halachah as earned interest but as payment by the depositer for services his "partner" renders him...
...Another thing is they require feeding, which means that tellers who should be in their cages serving the customers are often busy stuffing money into the machines' cartridges...
...I'm dreaming how nice it would be to hand the teller my deposit slip wrapped around an eight-inch stick of Dupont Red Cross Extra with maybe 15 seconds of fuse crimped into the cap...
...Guiltily I explained that I had to return to the U. S. for a few years to tidy up affairs—in fact to complete the doctorate the manager had prematurely honored me with—before I could make my permanent ally ah...
...Consider too all the services that Israeli banks offer...
...It's just against the rules for me to put the cash in my account...
...Why the long face...
...People Serving People...
...Item: My friend Moshe was annoyed when a bank clerk charged him ten shekels for a certain transaction...
...On the strength of that they could continue to open more bordello-like branches, extend their tentacles overseas and come up with ever more enticing savings plans—special this week for blue-eyed Sephardim...
...Yet every few months thereafter she has received some sort of incomprehensible statement of her account...
...Considering that there are only 1.5 million adults in the country, the nation should be suffering from writer's cramp, and in a way it is...
...For another—well, here's a story that illustrates typical Israeli bank service: I recently applied for one of those magic plastic cards that operates the automatic teller-in-the-wall...
...Oh, yes, and at Bank Hapoalim the slogan, sung with mind-numbing monotony right after every hourly news broadcast, is "Come Grow with Us...
...1 ask...
...in fact, they're rather mad about banking...
...Usury (ribit ketzutzah) among Jews is forbidden by the Torah, and according to Halachah this is generally extended to cover exacting interest even at nominal rates...
...Tourists may come out of Israeli banks with bushel baskets of shekels, but they always have that puzzled look...
...Well, it should be evident by now that the banks in little Israel have become big business...
...The country now has over 200 of these automatic tellers, and they have proved enormously popular (for one thing, they operate throughout Shab-bat...
...Yet they have their drawbacks...
...Rabbinical authorities came up with this solution years ago in the formula of the heter isskah, a legal device by which part of every bank deposit constitutes a direct investment in the bank's equity...
...But why did it take five days for those people to transfer a check of mine two blocks away to Bank Hapoalim...
...Counter twelve's teller is in the counting house, counting all the money...
...What I get instead is a considerable amount of aggravation, not a small share of bewilderment, and an accumulating resentment...
...The old gent behind me is applying aftershave...
...Anyway, why are you now in this line...
...I paled...
...For one thing, where could I possibly store all those millions of crummy shekels needed to make a bank heist worthwhile...
...Nesvisky," this worthy said, closing the door behind me...
...And here I am, still standing in line with my fantasy...
...shekel is a biblical acronym for shtay kilo lirot—your rabbi can explain...
...Could she demonstrate...
Vol. 8 • April 1983 • No. 4
