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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
Welcome back, my dear friends, for day number two in Shara B'Tachon. And as we mentioned, having established that a person who places his trust in a false god or a human being becomes distanced from Hashem. Chavos Avavos now proceeds to show that the same applies to one who places trust in his own prowess. So what happens is, you imagine there's a scale here.
If I'm not trusting in Hashem, who am I trusting in? Myself, in another power. There's no alternative. You can't say, well, I trust in Hashem, but I also trust in myself.
You know, we say it. It's a beautiful thing that we have. In God we trust. On every dollar bill.
On every coin. It's a very good reminder. Because money is the thing that people get lost in the most. Their pursuit for money.
Their pursuit for wealth. Their pursuit for luxury. Their pursuit for materialism. It's a very important reminder for us to note every single time we look at a dollar bill.
In God we trust. In Hashem. It's an important thing. So now the...
The author continues as follows. He says, He says, Likewise, if instead of trusting in Hashem, a person places his trust and his reliance on his own wisdom and clever tactics and on his own physical strength and material efforts, I'm going to close the deal.
He says he's toiling in vain and needlessly exhausting himself. For Hashem will leave him without the aid of his providence.
And once left to his own devices, his strategies will be too limited to attain his goal. You're going to run out of options. You're going to run out of solutions. You're going to run out of tactics to succeed.
As the verse states, HaShem traps the wise in their shrewdness.
This is from Ecclesiastes, which we are going to, that we read. On the holiday of Sukkot, what does it say? Once more I saw under the sun that the race was not won by the swift, nor the battle by the strong, nor does bread come to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent. We think, oh, he's a doctor, so he's going to make a lot of money.
He's a lawyer. He's so brilliant. He's so wise.
It's not the wise. I know somebody who had multiple medical degrees, multiple law degrees, and didn't have food to put on his table. It doesn't translate wisdom into bread. Who does get it?
Those that Hashem decides gets it. Listen to the amazing verse that we say every single day in our Grace After Meals. We say the following words from Psalms regarding the folly of relying on one's strength instead of Hashem. Young lions may want and hunger, but those who seek out Hashem will not lack any good.
Another thing a person might rely on instead of trusting in Hashem. Similarly, if a person If a person places trust in his abundant wealth he will learn that this trust is misplaced. One way he may learn
This is that his wealth may be taken from him and left for others to enjoy. We're so confident in, oh, my bank account, my investments, my portfolio on the stock market.
He says a rich man may be bedridden. but not gathered in to die, when he opens his eyes, it is gone. No more wealth. It's all gone.
Do not weary yourself to become rich. Refrain from relying on your own understanding. He says, you cast your eyes upon wealth and it's gone. For it makes itself wings.
Like an eagle, it soars to the heaven. Suddenly disappears.
Another verse states in Jeremiah about one who fails to rely on Hashem and instead amasses wealth unjustly. In the middle of his days it will leave him and at the end he will be considered a scoundrel. The same may occur to one who places trust in his wealth instead of in Hashem.
Alternatively, even if a person who trusts, who places his trust in his wealth does not lose it, the benefit he expects to derive from it may be withheld from it. Imagine someone who has wealth but doesn't get to enjoy it. He doesn't get to spend it. So what does he have?
He has it in his bank account. So what? What does it do for him? He can't access it.
I can tell you a lot of people who had unbelievable wealth. And they couldn't use it. I'll tell you particularly one amazing story. I had a great uncle.
His name was Rabbi Chaim Crisworth. Rabbi Chaim Crisworth was the chief rabbi of Antwerp. He was a brilliant, brilliant man. Brilliant.
Beyond comprehension. And one day, and he would raise, I'll tell you just early so you understand why he would raise money constantly. He was once very ill. And he went to one of the great sages of the generation.
And he said to him, what do I do? I'm sick. They've diagnosed me with a very serious condition. And they're saying I'm going to die.
So he says, the rabbi says to him when he was younger, he says, you know, in our morning prayers in the morning, we bring a Mishnah. What's the Mishnah that we read? So the Mishnah, that's fine, it's fine. The Mishnah that we read says, these are the things that a person does in this world and gets the reward in the world to come.
And these are both. You get the reward in this world and the world to come. He says, what is the list? He says, visiting the sick.
Marrying off the bride. And then escorting the dead. It seems out of order. It should be first marrying off the bride, then you get sick, and then you die.
So why is that mitzvah of marrying off the bride between getting sick and escorting the dead? Rabbi says it's a hint that someone who involves himself in marrying off the brides distances illness from death. If one is focused on marrying off the brides, he's holding distance between, he's creating a barrier between the illness and the death. So the rabbi tells him, Rabbi Criesworth, go marry off the brides.
And he spent the rest of his life raising millions and millions of dollars to marry off thousands and thousands of orphans. He would pay for their weddings. And he lived to be, I think, 96, 98 years old. So he was once on one of his journeys.
He meets a very, very poor Jew. Poor, destitute, you can't imagine. He asks him his name. Where are you from?
And Rabbi Chrysler says to him, again, repeat your name. He tells him his name. He says, where are you from? He says, I'm from this and this town back in Europe.
He says, where's your family? He says, my parents were killed in the Holocaust and I have nothing. He says, you know, I've been looking for you my entire life. He says, your father, before he died, told me that he left money for you in the Swiss bank.
This is the account number. Go and collect your money. In an instant, this guy was a millionaire. In an instant.
He thought, yeah, he's a pauper collecting. Didn't know that he had, I don't know, tens of millions of dollars sitting and waiting for him. Had no idea. Till one day it was revealed to him.
The Almighty sent the right messenger so that they happened to meet someplace. And the rabbi gave him all the information. He was a genius. He didn't need to write it down.
He remembered it all. exactly the account number, the name, exactly where he needed to go. But there's the reverse also, where someone has the money and they can't spend it. They can't enjoy, they can't benefit from it.
What's that worth? What's that worth? So you have all the money. What does it help?
As the wise one, whenever it says that, it's referring to King Salman.
There is a misfortune I have observed, says King Salman, a man to whom God has given riches, wealth, and honor, and he lacks nothing that the heart could desire, yet God did not give him the means to enjoy it. God did not give him the means to him.
And Hashem, instead what Hashem is really doing, it remains in this wealthy man's hands, only as a deposit. So he feels good that he has this money, but it's a deposit that he safeguards it from mishaps until the time comes that it's turned over through Hashem's providence. to someone who deserves it more than he does.
As King Solomon says, But to the sinner he has given the urge to gather in a mass, that he may give it over to one who is pleasing to God.
He may prepare, but a righteous man will wear it, and a virtuous man will apportion his money. So it's, yeah, we're all about, we're in a world where everyone's going to amass wealth and people are going to have their funds and they're going to have their college, their children's college funds. Everything is going to be secured. We are God proof.
We have financial security and people are so worried to ensure, do you have your retirement fund? Do you have your this and that? God doesn't take care of people in their 80s. God doesn't take care of people in their 90s.
God doesn't take care of people. 20s, then God takes care. No, heaven forbid. God takes care of everyone.
And even if you didn't put a penny away for retirement, God will take care of you too. We grew up in this American culture where you need to have financial security, a rainy day fund. What if? That doesn't mean that a person shouldn't put aside money for a rainy day.
It doesn't mean that a person shouldn't prepare. But don't put your alliance on that. We put our reliance on Hashem. An example that was asked to my rabbi of whether or not people should buy life insurance.
Is that a lack of bitachon, lack of reliance on Hashem for one to have a life insurance policy? He said if you can get a life insurance policy that can help if heaven forbid something happens to you and it's affordable. So why not do that? But don't put your reliance on that.
When my daughter was in the dating process, so my daughter and my wife ganged up on me and they said, Abba, you're not making enough phone calls. You're not making enough phone calls. I said, I don't need to make phone calls. I believe 100% that Hashem will take care of my daughter and my son, all my children, but that the right idea, the right shidduch will come exactly at the right time.
Still, you should make a phone call. So I called my rabbi. So my rabbi said, I'm in a dilemma. So my wife and my daughter are yelling at me that I need to put more effort forward.
But I firmly believe 100% that God will send the right idea at exactly the right time. So I don't need to. He says, you're right. You're 100% right.
Make a few phone calls just to please them. Make a few phone calls. And before you pick up the phone and you call, you can say, Hashem, I know that this has nothing to do with the success. It has nothing to do with the success.
I'm doing it to make them happy. I called a friend of mine. He married off several children. And he, I know, he spends hours and hours on the phone and he's calling and calling and this and that.
He's so busy. So I asked him, I said, now, after the fact, after you married already a few of your children, I said, did any of your phone calls have any impact on any of your children's of their significant others. He said, not a single solitary one.
He says, I was making phone calls, making all this noise. It came from someone out in left field. It came from my daughter's friend. He says, it made me feel good that I was making those phone calls, but had nothing to do with it.
And that's what we need to have in mind in our livelihood. Yeah, I'm going to make the phone call. I'm going to make the effort, but it has nothing to do with my success. My success comes only by Hashem deciding that I should or should not succeed.
That's it. Nothing else. Yeah, I'm going to go through the motions. I'll make the phone calls.
And every time before I pick up that phone to try to make a sale, I'm remembering, Hashem, I know this has nothing to do with my success. All of my success comes from you. I'm just playing the role now.
And worse yet, the money that one amasses in such a way may become a source of harm to him and of spiritual destruction of his soul. As King Solomon tells us further,
seen under the sun says king solomon wealth hoarded by its owner to his detriment thus in one way or another a person who believes in the power of his wealth will be prevented from enjoying its benefits this is because faith in one's wealth is an abandonment of bitachon of trust in hashem i trust in my money i trust in god It's one or the other. You can't have both.
To summarize, the first spiritual benefit of bitachon, of reliance on Hashem, is that one attains the serenity of a servant relying on his master and is attached to Hashem as a servant must be attached to his master. If, however, one relies on another entity, whether it be a false god, a human being, or one's own strength, cunning, or wealth, he is abandoning the source of all good for a broken cistern that cannot hold water.
In that case, Hashem withdraws or reduces his providential aid, and the person is liable to meet with failure or misfortune. This is so incredible. Thank you, Hashem, for giving us this incredible learning that we can study together. This concludes day number two, my dear friends, and I look forward to resuming our studies next week.
Thank you so much to all of our friends online. Thank you to all of you on Zoom, those of you here in the classroom, those of you who will be listening on the podcast. Thank you so much. Please like and share these classes so that more people can learn with us and we can have the merit of that.
Obviously, I know that has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with the hand of Hashem. If Hashem wants it to succeed, it will. If Hashem doesn't, it won't.
That's it. My dear friends, have a magnificent evening. Drive safely. Thank you so much.
And shalom from Houston.
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.