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The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
0:03 You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
0:11 My dear friends, now we resume with day number 10 on page 39, a third-worldly benefit to Bittachon. Yet another one of the benefits that Bittachon provides in regard to matters of material world is He says that it enables a person to enjoy mental and physical relief stressful jobs and physically exhausting work. You see, sometimes we work ourselves to the bone. We're working and working and working and working nonstop.
0:58 And it gives him the confidence to refuse offers of well-paying royal employment, which frees him from the challenges of living up to the protocols of the royal court and from being subject to this deceit of its members. A person who relies on his own prowess. tends to seek the form of employment that has the greatest potential for high income, even if it involves danger of taxing work. I want to share with you a story.
1:31 You know, my father would travel every week. He would travel all around the country. He was what we call a peddler. My father was a diamond dealer.
1:41 He sold jewelry as well. And he would go. He had his clients in Oklahoma. He had his clients in Dallas, Texas.
1:48 He would come to Houston every once in a while. He would go to Detroit. He would go to Chicago. He'd go to all the big cities.
1:56 But a lot of the southern states, he would go travel South Carolina and all these places. And he would go from one store to another store and try to sell his goods. And eventually he built some relationships. And I remember he would leave on either a Sunday night or a Monday morning.
2:12 He'd come back on a Thursday night or a Friday morning. And we'd ask him, how was your trip? Well, I'll come back. We were so excited.
2:18 And he would always say, Baruch Hashem, there's food for Shabbos. Thank God there's food for Shabbos. That was it. That was his thing.
2:26 One week he comes back on a Thursday night. And he says, I didn't sell a thing.
2:34 Knocked on the doors. He knocked on one door. Can't talk to you today. Come back next week.
2:40 Come back next month. Can't talk to you. Don't have time. Don't have this.
2:43 Get that one after another. Comes back home completely, you know, devoid of excitement, of energy. It was like, how is it possible? Nothing.
2:56 That's the will of Hashem. He goes to his office Friday morning and he's just putting into the database exactly who needs to be followed up with in a week and which one in a month and which one in a year and which one whatever. He put in all the information. As he's sitting there at his desk, he gets a phone call, random phone call from a guy he didn't think to go into his office.
3:15 He says, you know, I need a certain parcel of diamonds. Would you by any chance have this? My father looks. He says, yes, I actually do.
3:26 He says, send it right over. I'm wiring you the money. I need this ASAP. And that was it.
3:32 My father sold in that one phone call that he did not initiate more than he sold the entire week. More than he would have wanted to sell the entire week. What happened? It was a clear lesson from Hashem.
3:46 Our job is not to attain success. Our job is to not stop trying. Our job is to not stop putting forward an effort. The results are not in our hands.
4:05 The results are the hand of God. You work, you travel, and you go here, and you
4:11 go there, and this person rejects, and this one rejects, this
4:14 one, everyone, nobody wants to talk to you. You go back to your office, one phone call, and you sold more than all of the sales you would have potentially made that week. Because Hashem shows us. I'm right here.
4:28 Stop thinking that you're the one who makes these sales. Stop thinking that you're the one who is so successful, so brilliant, such a great sweet talker. You can get every,
4:40 you can convince them.
4:41 No, no, no, no. It's all the hand of Hashem. Okay? He says,
5:18 and that is most conducive to letting him fulfill all his spiritual obligations. He chooses such an occupation based on his strong conviction that the specific avenue of employment that he chooses
5:58 I want to tell you that people think it makes sense if I work five days a week or if I work six days a week there's a difference you work one more day you'll make one more day's earning I have a better idea Right? Someone came to a rabbi and he said, I have a much better idea.
6:20 I'm going to work seven days a week. And then I'll make more money.
6:25 Do you know what the rabbi said? He said, imagine you have, you know those big water containers that you have like the little spouts? What do you call those things? The water...
6:37 Not the fountain, the one they use at the baseball games. What are those called? The dispenser, the pitchers, you know, those big things. Not the pitcher that throws the ball, right?
6:47 A big water container. So it has a spout over there on the bottom. You put your cup. Imagine you have two spouts, three spouts, four spouts, five spouts, six spouts.
6:57 It's like, okay, so now you can get the water. I have a better idea. I'm going to put seven spouts and then I'll get more water. You're not going to get more water.
7:06 Whatever water is in there, you're going to get it out through those seven channels. You're not going to get more water out. What people don't understand is that the amount of money that a person is supposed to make is already decreed from Rosh Hashanah. This past Rosh Hashanah, Hashem already decreed exactly how much you're going to make.
7:28 You know that? You're not going to make a penny more or a penny less this year than what Hashem decreed on Rosh Hashanah. David, do you hear that? It's unbelievable.
7:39 So if God decreed that you will make a billion dollars, you're going to make a billion dollars whether or not you show up to work or not. You understand? It's an amazing thing. And if God decreed that, God forbid, someone won't make any money, you can go to work all day, all night, and it's not going to change anything.
7:57 So why should a person have to work more? Why should a person have to work seven days a week? But what happens? We convince ourselves in our own mistaken thought of arrogance that it's my work that brings my success.
8:11 It's my work. And if I open up another spout, I'll earn more. No, you're just depleting it faster. And that's the mistake.
8:21 You could have made it working four days a week. You could have made it working three hours. I'll tell you an amazing story. It's a true story.
8:27 I was teaching a class back when there was a kosher restaurant on Richmond Avenue here in Houston. There was a kosher restaurant right across from Costco. It was called Mariah Cafe. It's a very nice little cafe over there.
8:41 And I had a class there on, I think it was Tuesday mornings at seven o'clock in the morning. We had a, it was called Breakfast Club. That's when they opened. I said, you know what?
8:51 This will help them a little. People are going to work already. I had a young man who came to my class. He wasn't so young, but he was well experienced.
8:59 And after coming many, many times to class, he says to me, Rabbi, I need to talk to you after class privately. I said, sure. Pulls me aside after class, and he says to me, Rabbi, you see, you talk about Shabbos, and I really, really, really want to observe Shabbos.
9:15 I really want to. He says, but one thing you don't know is that I work at the Mercedes-Benz dealership right down the block. He says, do you know when I sell cars? On Shabbos.
9:29 He says, I maybe sell two, three cars during the week. On Saturday, I can sell 18 cars, 20 cars. He says, that's when I make my money. How can I keep Shabbos?
9:43 How can I keep Shabbos if that's when I make my livelihood? You know what I told him? You stumped God. God never thought about that.
9:53 How? God never thought about it. How are you going to keep Shabbos? Because that's
9:59 when you make sales.
10:01 What do you mean? I said, talk to God. Tell him you want to observe his Shabbos. Tell him.
10:10 He says, that's it? That's it. Talk to God. Say, God, I'm willing to give up my job for your Shabbos.
10:18 I need you to find me a different job so I can make a livelihood for my family. Okay. I leave that meeting and I head back home. On my drive back home, I get a phone call from a friend of mine.
10:33 who has a very successful business out of the tri-state area. He says to me, it's an old classmate of mine, he says, I'm looking for a sales manager, but I'm not looking for someone who's just a starter. I need someone who's a real, experienced, professional sales guy. I said, how about somebody who works for sales at Mercedes-Benz?
10:56 He says, that would be perfect. And as true as I'm sitting here right now, he's been a Shabbat observant since that Shabbos. He got that job. He worked for this company out of New York for about 12 or maybe 15 years.
11:16 And today he lives in Lakewood, New Jersey. He's Shabbat observant completely. All we have to do, oh, my livelihood, Mercedes, I'm selling these cars. I only sell on Shabbos.
11:30 Talk to God. Oh, he can't manage this. He can't handle your dilemma. He can handle a lot more than that, okay?
11:40 But this is a true story. It's unbelievable. People think that it's like, I can't, I can't, I can't do it. Hashem structured the world in a way that you can do and follow his commands.
11:54 Hashem gives us the ingredients in the Torah. of exactly how he wants us to live. This is the guidebook. The Torah is the guidebook which tells us exactly how to live life.
12:07 So rather, the amount he will earn is dependent purely on the decree of Hashem, blessed is He, regardless of the venue.
12:22 From neither, from sunrise, nor from sunset, nor from wilderness, comes greatness. For God is the judge. He lowers this one and raises that one. You know, the most incredible thing, I don't talk politics.
12:43 You know, I don't like to talk politics in class. I don't want to get into it. It's not relevant to anything that we talk about in our class. But there's a whole disagreement whether or not the 2020 election was stolen or not stolen.
12:59 And then people are saying, oh, 2024 was stolen, not stolen, whatever. It doesn't make a difference. Look for a second at what happened. One day he was president, and one day he wasn't.
13:14 One day he was on top, most powerful person in the world, and one day he's just a regular citizen. Four years later, one day he's a regular citizen, one day he's the most powerful person in the world. You see, what God is showing us, who's in control. So why couldn't it be just a consecutive eight years?
13:31 Because God didn't want it. I had someone call me up. Literally, I had someone call me up. He was actually a prominent rabbi.
13:42 He called me up and he said, I don't understand God. He said, I don't understand. There's never been a president that has been better for the Jewish people. How is it possible that he's no longer president?
13:56 This is
13:57 the reward?
13:59 So what's the answer now that we see? Hey, take a step back. You don't know what's going on in the heavenly realms. God decides what needs to happen when.
14:11 God decides. Maybe that wasn't the right time for him to be doing something different. The idea that we don't understand the ways of Hashem because we are so microscopically focused on right here, right now. We have to zoom out and zoom out and zoom out and zoom out.
14:31 And sometimes it could be 10 lifetimes till you're able to see the full picture. Ah, now I get it. Now I get it. You look at all of these empires and today they're nothing.
14:44 They're nothing. They're gone. Massive, powerful empires. They controlled almost the entire planet Earth.
14:53 And they're gone. They came and they went. But do you know who stands forever? Jewish people.
15:01 The Jewish people stand forever. With all of the Holocaust. Where's my list? Where's my list?
15:07 Ah, my list. With all of the... Here we go. Start.
15:14 Expulsions. Forced conversions in Italy. Expulsions from Jerusalem. Book burnings.
15:21 Property confiscation. Synagogue burnings. Expulsion. Forced conversion. Massacre. Synagogue burning.
15:27 Synagogue burning. Synagogue. This is like different cities, different places in France. Expulsion. Another expulsion from France. A different diocese.
15:37 Forced conversion. Toledo. First conversion. Steak burnings. Toledo.
15:44 Expulsion. Spain, forced conversion. Italy, expulsion. Orleans, massacre.
15:53 Rome, Jews burned alive. And they're all gone. They're all gone. Sometimes we get caught up in the present, the here and the now.
16:04 We don't see the big picture. And this is, bitachon means you don't understand the verse is telling us. It's neither from sunrise nor from sunset nor from the wilderness comes greatness. For God is the judge.
16:21 He decides who's greatness. He decides who's going to be uplifted and who will be taken down. He lowers this one and raises that one. Amar, as the verse states in Psalms,
16:37 In lush meadows, he lays me down. Beside tranquil waters, he leads me. Thus, the third worldly benefit of Bitochon is that it allows a person to seek employment that is not emotionally stressful, physically taxing, or potentially harmful to his reputation. You don't have to do things that are not ethical.
17:01 It's a question I get so many times, people asking me, you know, my job requires me to act in an unethical way, to do things that are unethical. I had a guy call me. He's a listener for the podcast. I actually have to continue the conversation with him.
17:17 If you hear this, remember to call me back. A wonderful young guy grew up in England. And he said to me, his question was that his livelihood... He makes a very nice income, but it requires him to do things that are not truthful.
17:38 I said, is it illegal? I said, it's not illegal. It's just not truthful. It's not truthful.
17:44 He has to tell people that investments are good when they're not. Things like that. Does Hashem want us to do something which is unethical? Does Hashem want us to do something which is untruthful?
17:56 It's a contradiction to Hashem. Hashem is all truth. The only way for your truth... Is defined by how long something lasts.
18:06 A lie will always fall. You see over there we have on the board. We have MS. Is the word Alef Mem. Tough. Those letters.
18:14 They all have two legs. They stand. MS is truth. It will stand forever.
18:20 Sheker. All stands on one leg. Eventually it will fall. Falsehood will eventually fall. It will not stand forever.
18:29 Hashem, our God, is truth. It's forever. The fourth worldly benefit of Bittachon, another one of the benefits that Bittachon provides in regard to matters of the material world is,
18:51 that one who relies on Hashem has little heartache as a result of his business ventures. Even if he suffers a setback, such as when merchants remain, merchandise remains with him unsold, he's stuck with a full warehouse of stuff.
19:14 Or if he's unable to collect his debt.
19:20 Or if he's struck with a bodily illness that makes him unable to work.
19:28 These obstacles do not cause him distress. Why? Because he knows that Hashem arranges his affairs better than he can.
19:42 And Hashem chooses what is good for him better than he can choose for himself.
19:53 As the verse states, In Psalm 62, for God alone waits silently my soul because my hope is from him. Thus, the fourth worldly benefit of B'Tochon is that it makes a person relaxed about his business matters, even if he suffers setbacks. So I want to tell you, there's a story that is public. You can find the story online, I'm sure, where there was a...
20:26 secular kibbutz in Israel that decided that they would at the last minute they were going to observe the laws of Shemitah the laws of the sabbatical year. And they weren't going to work the grains. They weren't going to work the field. They were going to rest as the Torah commands us to do.
20:47 Let the land lie foul for the seventh year. Now we know that if someone accepts upon themselves that seventh year, the Torah promises, two portions ago, the Torah promises in Parshas Behar, that You will have a triple crop in the sixth year that will provide for the sixth year, for the seventh year, and the eighth year. These guys started late. They started right at the beginning of Shemitah, the beginning of the seventh year, so they didn't have the triple crop in the sixth year.
21:20 But they said, let's see what God can produce on the eighth year. Sure enough, the land lie foul in the seventh year. comes the eighth year and the land wasn't able to produce the vegetables and the fruits that they were known to have the highest quality of a certain expensive fruit. And the only thing they can produce was a certain type of vegetable that was the cheapest vegetable on the market.
21:46 And they're like, this is God? This is what he does? This is what we get as reward for our commitment to his Torah? They're very cynical about it.
21:58 Sure enough, God has his mysterious ways. And there was a country in Europe, I believe it was Germany, that that year had zero produce of that specific vegetable. And they were looking for a bid from across the globe. They had several qualifications.
22:19 Obviously, the quality needed to be a good quality, but also it needed to be enough for the entire country from one source. They didn't want to start dealing with multiple different locations, different contracts. One contract, one place, and that's it. And you know who won that contract, of course.
22:38 That kibbutz won that contract. And they made more money than they ever made from any of their expensive fruits. By far. The people put on their yarmulkes and were packing these bags.
22:53 They couldn't pack them fast enough. Everything, the entire crop, everything went. Oh, we understand our market. We understand our thing.
23:05 We don't understand anything. Hashem is the one who gives. Hashem is the one who takes. Hashem is the one who decides this year will be good like this and next year will be good like that.
23:17 Oh, but I only know my industry. I'm a garage door guy and all I do is garage door. So now Hashem says, no, no, no, you're going to have to shift now because I have a better path for you where you can succeed in a much better way. And we're like, what?
23:31 But this is what I'm comfortable with. This is what I limit myself with. We limit ourselves. Hashem is unlimited.
23:41 This, my dear friends, is the journey of reliance on Hashem. Finding a way to rely on Hashem only. You know what we're going to do? We're going to finish up.
23:52 We're going to continue with one more. Thus, I will just conclude here. The fourth worldly benefit of B'tachon is that it makes a person relaxed about his business matters, even if he suffers setbacks. I'll tell you one other thing, is that I find sometimes people go into business with such incredible aspirations.
24:12 I'm going to make so much money. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. And I meet them a few years later.
24:17 I'm like, you know how things are going? Like, ha. they never tell you you know things are going great you know things are going it's like i always feel like you know just i just had an issue with i lost one of my properties and like like there's always like the
24:32 People think in an imaginary world in their brain that everything is going to be successful and I'm going to be the next Jeff Bezos who's just going to open up an Amazon and it's going to become the next Fortune 100 company. It's not always that case. We have to realize that Hashem is the one who controls everything. This concludes day number 10.
25:02 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.