RIETS Launches Graduate Program in Business Ethics and Halakha

RIETS is launching a graduate program in Business Ethics and Jewish Law, YU News announced on July 24. The program will begin in fall 2026.

Participants will receive a Master of Hebrew Literature in Business Ethics and Jewish Law. The program will address Judaism’s approach to business ethics in four areas of concentration: real estate, sales, finance and management. Classes will be online, synchronous and available to men and women.

The master’s degree requires 30 credits to complete. Alternatively, students can receive an advanced certificate by taking two classes, Business Ethics & Jewish Law I and II.

Courses cover a variety of topics in Jewish business law, including charging interest, fraud, employee rights, monopolies and acquisition. The master’s program also requires a capstone thesis.

Rabbi Kalman Laufer, a dayan [judge] on the Beth Din of America who holds a master’s degree in accounting, has been appointed program director. He told The Commentator that he will be teaching the advanced courses along with Rabbi Daniel Rapp, instructor in YU’s Stone Beit Midrash Program, who holds a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. Rabbi Josh Fagin, rebbe in the Isaac Breuer College and rabbinic fellow in RIETS’s Rabbi Norman Lamm Kollel L’Horaah for yadin yadin [adjudication] semikha, will be assistant program director and teach the certificate and introductory courses. The program will operate under the guidance of rosh yeshiva Rabbi Mordechai Willig.

This program is the second graduate degree program in applied ethics and Jewish law that RIETS offers. In 2025, YU started a master’s in Jewish bioethics and halakha. Both programs offer certificates and master’s degrees. According to the RIETS website, these graduate programs are “designed for students who want to bring deep Torah learning into conversation with the practical questions facing modern Jewish life.” 

Rabbi Laufer told The Commentator how Jewish education prepares students to be experts in Jewish law regarding kashrut, Passover, prayer, etc., while often neglecting important matters like business ethics.

“Most people carry an unstated assumption that halacha governs the morning and the evening — davening, kashrus, Shabbos — and that the eight hours in between are neutral territory where you’re expected to be a decent person but not obligated,” Rabbi Laufer told The Commentator.

“Our program was built for that educational gap. The goal is not only to make our graduates more ethical in some general sense — most of them are already serious, honest people. The goal is to also make the halacha of businesses operative in their daily working lives.”

Rabbi Laufer described how YU’s curriculum adopts the rabbinic tradition to navigate modern problems. 

“Chazal [the sages of the Talmud] say the first question a person is asked in the next world is ‘nasata v’nasata b’emunah’ — were you honest in business. Not ‘did you daven,’ not ‘did you keep Shabbos,’” Laufer said. “We are not going to pretend our students are trading donkeys in a Babylonian marketplace. They are dealing with LLCs, convertible notes, syndicated real estate deals, equity compensation and platform businesses. The intellectual work of this program is precisely the mapping — taking a financial instrument that did not exist a century ago and asking, seriously, which halachic category it belongs to.”

Classes begin after Sukkot, and students are encouraged to apply on the RIETS website and contact Rabbi Fagin for more information, Rabbi Laufer said.

“Honestly, I think this new Master’s in Business Ethics & Jewish Law is a great program for YU to be launching,” David Basseches (SSSB ‘27) told The Commentator. “In a world that’s constantly evolving, we need grounded ethics from our Roshei Yeshiva now more than ever. In Sy Syms we already get a taste of this through our JUDS classes, tying business topics into a Jewish framework, so it’s exciting to see that same idea taken further at the graduate level. It shows YU is serious about building out that ‘Torah and business’ pipeline instead of just leaving it as an undergrad elective.”

Photo Caption: (l-r) Director Rabbi Kalman Laufer; Assistant Director Rabbi Josh Fagin; Instructor Rabbi Daniel Rapp

Photo Credit: Yeshiva University