Our Greatest Servants

Against My Will 

About ten years ago, I had job on Wall Street with a boss who couldn’t stand me.  

Maybe it was my smile. Maybe it was the coffee cup I used that people loved to talk about.  

She always gave me the hardest assignments. She constantly nitpicked my work. Her favorite pastime was to tell stories about me to her supervisors.  
When there was a convention 300 miles away, she laughed in my face while handing me the ticket.  

Even now, I get chills thinking about it.  

It turned out that this person was one of the greatest blessings to my career.  

Giving me the hardest assignments forced me to learn about our product. I was in constant communication with everyone in the company. Nitpicking my work meant I had to learn every which way I could “mess up,” eventually becoming super-detailed with everything I did.  

That weeklong seminar in outer space turned into a workshop on the two most important applications I would need in my profession.  

Even when she finally r got id of me, the head of HR tried to sympathize. “She takes care of things nobody else knows how to do. You can be replaced, she can’t.” 

At every job since then, I look for where I can do things nobody else can.  

Powerful Emuna 

This is where greatness of God comes in.

Against her will, my manager became my greatest mentor. It was her desire to destroy me that became my valuable asset. All the time she was plotting, she was helping me move forward.  

Are our worst enemies really our greatest servants? Does Hashem force them to act against their will to serve us? 

When the Lord accepts a person’s ways, He will cause even his enemies to make peace with him. (Proverbs 16:7) 

What does this mean if our enemies do not apologize – that we just get what Hashem planned for us to receive from them?  

This peace can be the cleansing of our spiritual slate by the harassment of a bully. It could be a fierce opponent in, say, tennis, that forced us to be the best in the league. It could be a cousin who would taunt us for being weak, only to be one of the reasons you decided to do something that made you strong.  

Our Enemies 

Does this work on a national level as well? Do the enemies of the Jewish People serve us even as they try to destroy us? 

Today, we receive a lot of that power in the form of our high-tech industry.  

Who enabled our high-tech industry? 

Yasser Arafat and Joseph Stalin.  

Our enemies forced us to be the best at cybersecurity. Most of the CEOs and CTOs of Israel’s high-tech industry come from IDF units like 8200.  

Our need to shore up our electronic defenses resulted in literally legions of elite level software developers. That Soviet Jews were forbidden from joining any profession outside of the sciences brought hundreds of thousands of engineers to our shores right when the internet was born.  

Against their will, the Arabs were building the foundation for the greatest Jewish prosperity in the Land of Israel since King Solomon.  

Now they are our friends because they are desperate not to be ruled by Iran.  

Who are the people making your life miserable right now? Who are your worst enemies? 

Thank God for your troubles. Pray to Hashem for help. Ask yourself how are they serving my interests right now? Ask Hashem how these people are your servants.  

If you don’t have an answer, keep growing closer to Hashem. In time, He will show you.   

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David Ben Horin is the writer and trader for Endurance Investing & Trading Daily. He lives in the Jezreel Valley with his wife and children, lots of Jews, Arabs, and the occasional shepherd.