Hashem’s Year-End Stimulus
One year after the worst financial crisis in our times, three big Wall Street firms will be paying out over $29 billion in bonuses while millions of people are starving…
The Garden of Emuna saved my life. After reading it for the third time, I thought I was a baal Emuna. I could see the Divine purpose behind everything. Even the 
bad things weren’t so bad. I felt so high, I thought my life would mimic Gan Eden all of my days. Recently something happened that almost destroyed everything. It shook my sense of emuna to the very core. It didn’t take much to learn that emuna is not something I can simply possess like a gold watch. It is something that needs to be constantly maintained and reinforced with hard work. It can escape you just as easily as you found it. Emuna is something that is always challenged, and Bezrat Hashem, it is something that is always strengthened.
The primary cause of addiction to casual sex, internet pornography, and all other forms of sex crimes, is a desire to escape the stresses of reality by hiding inside a world of fantasy. With emuna, our world has far less stress, and absolutely no uncertainty to worry about. King David describes the emotional state of having complete emuna perfectly:
Of evil tidings he will have no fear, his heart is firm, confident in Hashem. (Psalms 112:7)
Every challenge to our emuna is a Divine gift. It is our beloved Father sending us a “Heavenly Stimulus Package,” a special path to the level of trust King David praises.
As I thought King David was talking about me, Hashem sent a wake-up call in the form of a newspaper article:
One year after the worst financial crisis in our times, three big Wall Street firms will be paying out over $29 billion in bonuses, an all time record. While over 10 million people are collecting unemployment, 119,000 financial employees will be dividing among themselves an amount larger than the Gross Domestic Product of the majority of nations on earth! At one investment bank, the average employee is set to receive $700,000.
How could such an injustice take place? How could an industry reward itself after ruining the lives of so many people? How much poverty was created by these very excesses?
I found it hard to understand a world in where something like this could happen. Many of my friends felt the same.
As I was dusting off the cover of Rabbi Arush’s book, I began to reflect on its teachings. Everything in this world comes directly from Hashem. Everything is for the good, and therefore is intrinsically good. Everything that happens in our individual realities is geared solely for our spiritual growth.
If this is the case, aren’t these current events really hidden blessings? Isn’t there a great opportunity for spiritual advancement here? Beneath the veneer of this superficial darkness, isn’t there a great beam of light waiting to be released?
Then it hit me.
How can a billionaire ever need something? How can someone who has everything ever lack?
There are many great blessings in not being super-rich or all-powerful. In lacking, Hashem blesses us with awareness that there is need in this world. There are people who have less, and we all have the unique opportunity to feel for them on a deeper level. Even as we struggle, we can add a little more to the tzedaka box to help our brethren. We can add that much more kavanah behind our prayers for their welfare.
In not having it all, we can better appreciate everything that Hashem gives us. The money we are Blessed with comes directly from Hashem. At any given day, we can be flat broke and begging for our daily bread. Acknowledging that Hashem provides all of our physical needs is a Blessing that we receive every moment of our lives! If I have a billion in the bank, I will not need to know this. I may feel as if I don’t have to acknowledge it at all, Hashem forbid! This was the curse of the snake in the Garden of Eden. After the sin, the snake was to spend the rest of its life crawling on the ground eating dust. Dust is everywhere, therefore the snake never lacks. It never asks for, or acknowledges anything Hashem gives him.
We are the lucky ones. The Kollel student barely making ends meet. The new immigrant to Israel who gives up the “easy” lifestyle to subsist hand-to-mouth to meet his daily needs. The honest employee, who makes a fraction of what his more aggressive, and less scrupulous co-workers make.
In having to struggle for our daily bread, we get to suffer a little. We get to hurt a little for the Blessings Hashem gives us. In our struggles, we gradually pay for the sins we commit in this world. This is the greatest blessing of all. Hashem Willing, when our Judgment Day arrives, so many of the sins we committed in this life will be already “paid” for.
Maybe being a billionaire isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
What if Hashem is asking the world for more emuna right now? He is challenging all of us to remember that even in the face of such perceived greed or injustice, we still wake up every morning with the awareness that in the next 24 hours, our King will pump our heart 100,000 times. He will breathe air into our nostrils 20,000 breaths. He will make sure that we all have enough to eat and to maintain our physical bodies so we can serve Him. He will give us all these gifts because He loves us.
Instead of harboring sheer anger at Wall Street, I tip my hat off to the people at Goldman Sachs and say thank you for bringing this to my attention. With all of my heart, I say to my beloved and compassionate Father in heaven, thank You for the reminder.
Tonight I will have a warm cup of tea, and begin once again, Rabbi Arush’s masterpiece.
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Dovber Halevi is the author of the financial book, How to Survive the Coming Decade of Anxiety. He writes for Breslev Israel and The Middle East Magazine. He lives with his wife and two children in Eretz Yisrael.
12/07/2009
A different take on Wall Street I had a different feeling about Wall Street than this article conveyed. I took a chizuk that even when it looks as if the sky is falling and that a certain industry is doomed, Hashem can turn it around for good in an eye blink. I believe we should have an ‘ayin tova’ for those who made out extremely well, and take a chizuk that each persons parnossa is determined by Hashem and not controlled by the economy at large. Thus millions were losing jobs, and these people did very well.
12/07/2009
I had a different feeling about Wall Street than this article conveyed. I took a chizuk that even when it looks as if the sky is falling and that a certain industry is doomed, Hashem can turn it around for good in an eye blink. I believe we should have an ‘ayin tova’ for those who made out extremely well, and take a chizuk that each persons parnossa is determined by Hashem and not controlled by the economy at large. Thus millions were losing jobs, and these people did very well.