Humility

The last six months of my life taught me the hardest lesson in humility that I’ve ever had to learn. Now I understand why the sole compliment given to the greatest man who ever lived, Moshe Rabbeinu, was about his humility.  

The last year has been difficult.  I lost my job and started my own small business.  It has been a struggle.  

The hardest part of my job was working on LinkedIn and watching everyone in Israel continue with their careers. The LinkedIn algorithm to determine which people a subscriber sees on his feed is based on success. Consequently, most of the people on my feed were those who were successful in their work and on LinkedIn. 

It made me so mad! It wasn’t fair! They were doing so well, while I barely moved!  

I convinced myself that my lack of success was because the “Israeli elite” refused to let me, a Chareidi, work among them. That was, until I saw Chareidim on LinkedIn making posts such as “When they block you at the door, find a window to jump through.”  

How ironic – the same people who accuse Chareidim of not working are the ones who provide the LinkedIn platform where Chareidim can advance! 

Between the struggle to start a new business and the Chareidi version of Israeli determination, I was filled with hate.  

Hashem was very angry with me. I could feel Him turning away. I saw so many blessings in life vanish. How bad? One night I had a dream that I was bitten by a snake. Two huge blood marks were deep into my flesh. That is supposed to mean money. My problems were solved, right?  

By the end of the dream, I had almost squeezed the life out of the snake. I think he was still alive, but I am not sure. The Gemara tells us that if a snake bites you in a dream, you will come into money. BUT – if you kill the snake in the dream, you lose the money.  

All hatred is baseless. Hashem commands us in David HaMelech’s Psalm:  

Desist from anger and forsake wrath. (Psalms 37:7)  

 

The moment you realize this, you understand that those developers, entrepreneurs, and digital marketers in Tel Aviv, Herzliya, and Rishon L’Tzion are His children. And then you understand that hating them means you are looking into the eye of the King of the Universe and spitting on His children.  

Nothing good comes from hatred. 

Changes  

Once I realized this, I forced myself to see the good in every Jew. No matter what they say or do, this is Hashem’s world and nobody, neither us nor them, can change the course He set out for it.  

Our steps on this course forbid us to hate. I paid a heavy price.  

As I made these changes, Hashem changed my world. Tasks all around me that were formerly impossible started to get done. Nothing seemed so hopeless anymore. 

I could feel blessings return to my life. A hundred mishaps a day turned into a handful. My business started to move forward. Everything I wanted for my children, my wife, and our future now appeared as a light at the end of a long tunnel.  

The Ultimate Lesson 

Humility is not easy. It might be the hardest character trait to build. Humility is the diamond of the Jewish soul that must be mined from the deep earth and polished.  

Moshe was the greatest Jew and the greatest human being. In the Torah, Hashem identified the single, unique quality of Moshe: He was the humblest man that ever lived.  

Moshe was the greatest man ever, and Hashem wrote down in His Torah for us to learn every year forever that the one quality we must learn from our teacher is humility.  

Humility is the greatest achievement a Jew can accomplish. It is also the hardest: 

• We speak loshon hara to protect our dignity.  
• We spend beyond our means to look as distinguished as everyone else.  
• We work more hours than necessary so we can stand out above all others. 

It’s not easy to accept where we are right now when so many people are “ahead” of us. It’s even harder to root for those among us doing great things while we feel that we’re sitting on the bench.  

That’s the lesson in humility that I learned: Don’t hate someone because they are doing better than you. 

Watching others reach for the stars while you are mired in the muck is a gift from God. It’s the chance to show Hashem your emunah in His just world. Humility opens the doors to honest self-examination and the improvements that Hashem put us in this life to make. 

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David Ben Horin lives in Afula with his family, millions of sunflowers, and Matilda, our local camel. David‘s Israeli startup, Center Stage Marketing, is a lean marketing agency for startups and small businesses that creates and promotes SEO optimized ROI-driven to the right audience on LinkedIn to make your business the star of the show.