Not Everything Is a Matter of Business…

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself” and emuna.   

The Business Way of Thinking 

“There’s no point in trying to resurrect a dead body. Make peace with reality and don’t be stubborn. Save your energy for the next project.” That was the position of the yeshiva’s Donors’ Committee. 

But the veteran Rosh Yeshiva, whose great talent was to explain complicated and deep things in simple language, did his best to explain to them that he couldn’t sit back and watch his lifelong project go down the drain. He still believed that the teaching staff would be able to rehabilitate the yeshiva’s name and bring it back to its former glory.  

Neither side was able to understand the other. A few bad years of poor enrollment and some problematic students had ruined the yeshiva’s special atmosphere and its name. The Rosh Yeshiva was insisting on trying to save the yeshiva, but the donors who spoke with him were determined to close the yeshiva and open another.

One of the donors got up and approached the Rosh Yeshiva: “You should know, Rabbi, that as a very experienced businessman, I too have known failure and losses. And I too tried to save failing projects that I was emotionally involved in. I really understand you. 

“But experience has taught me – and afterwards I heard this from the greatest businessmen in the world who said the same thing: Don’t try to save a failing project. It’s much easier to close the business, thus cutting your losses, and start something new, than to try to revive failing projects. Experience shows that in every attempt like that you just sink further down and only increase your losses. 

“One must never become emotionally involved in a project; if you are sustaining losses – just sell and get on with life!” 

It was these decisive and logical words that shocked the rabbi deeply, and he cried out in pain: “Would you say the same thing about your son? If your son was not successful in life, would you give up on him and just invest in a new son, or would you do your best to save him?” 

The Rabbi didn’t wait for the obvious answer to this question and continued: “Are you comparing my yeshiva to a business project?! Can one just throw the students out into the street?! Every student is like a son to me. I will never give up on them!” 

The room became silent. The donors whispered to each other and decided to give the Rosh Yeshiva a bigger donation and the backing he needed to rehabilitate the yeshiva and to bring it back to its former glory. 

Negative Annual Reports 

Children are not a business venture. A failing business venture can be trashed and abandoned. But children – even if they are unsuccessful – their father will never give up on them! 

And that is the whole power of holy Yom Kippur: For we are your children, and you are our Father! 

On Rosh Hashana we received a “budget”. We have tasks and goals. We must produce profits, not losses. We are to use our budget to rectify and improve the world and not, chalila, to damage or ruin it.  

Chatanu, avinu, pashanu¹…But we have transgressed, we have committed iniquity, we have wantonly transgressed, and we have done bad deeds and have ruined the world. At the end of the year we appear before the Great Investor, the Holy One, Blessed Be He, downcast and embarrassed. He sees that businesswise there is no justification to re-budget this business, to provide it with life, children and sustenance. 

In such a reality, we have no ability to even begin to plead for forgiveness… 

Where do we get the ability to stand up, bolster ourselves, and request forgiveness from Hashem yitbarach after all the mistakes we have made? 

We get it only from the knowledge that we are not a business venture. We are His children! 

A father whose son has fallen and failed and deteriorated to the point of being involved with crime and drugs – not only will he not take away his budget for the coming year, but he will increase the budget to pay for everything that is needed for the son’s rehabilitation: more treatments, more tools, more activities, more medicines, more educators who will take care of him. The main thing is that the son should get back on track.  

Whether Children or Businesses 

Rabbi Yehuda is of the opinion that when a Jew does Hashem’s will, he is called a son. But if he doesn’t do Hashem’s will, he is not called a son; and someone who is not a son is a servant. As we said on Rosh Hashana, there are only two options: “whether as children or as servants.”²  A servant is a business. There is no point in investing in a poorly functioning servant. Punish him or sell him and buy a new one. It’s better to lose a certain amount from the servant now than to hold on to him and lose much more because of him. You spend money on him, and he just causes damage…That is the way the business mind works.  

Rabbi Meir comes and disagrees completely with this approach: There’s no such thing! In both cases they are called children! 

How does Rabbi Meir prove his claim? By using the psukim that describe the Jewish People when they are in their worse states spiritually: “They are stupid children”³, “children with no faithfulness”⁴, “seed of the wicked, vicious children”⁵, “rather than being told, ‘you are not my people,’ they will be told, ‘you are the sons of the living  G-d’.”⁶ 

Even when they have no Torah in them (“stupid”) and even when they have no emuna in them (“no faithfulness”), and even when they commit the most severe sins (“wicked, vicious”) and even when they lose all resemblance to Jews and look just like the non-Jews (“being told, ‘you are not my people’”) – in spite of all this, they are children! 

Every Jew, even the biggest sinner and the most distant Jew, is a son of Hashem. And when it’s your own son – you don’t look and don’t calculate expenses vs. income and losses vs. profits. You simply love him and want him to succeed and are willing to give anything, everything you have and beyond what you have to help him succeed! 

You Are my Father! 

Even when the son rebels against his father and harms him and causes him distress – even then he is Hashem’s son, as we brought in the past about Avshalom who rebelled against his father [King David] and committed horrendous acts, and chased him with the intent of killing him. And yet, David Hamelech was very concerned for Avshalom and pleaded with his soldiers not to kill him, and when he heard that Avshalom had been killed, screamed eight times, “My son! My son!”⁷ 

And this is the place to remind you of the story we told already about Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, the gaon, the tzaddik, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir Yeshiva, who went to the graves of tzaddikim on the day before Yom Kippur, but was not satisfied until he went to pray at Yad Avshalom, and it was there that he felt encouraged. When he was asked why, he replied:  

If David Hamelech, a flesh-and-blood father, had such compassion for his son, was so looking forward to giving him an opportunity to do teshuva, and was willing to accept him with love after all the wicked things that he had done to him, because a father is a father – how much more so regarding our Father in Heaven, who is willing to forgive us for everything we have done, because a father is a father! It was only this thought, this feeling, this knowledge that gave me the hope to go into the holy day with enough emotional strength to stand and plead for forgiveness! – said R. Chaim. 

Dear Jews, I have seen and heard stories of wonders and miracles that happened to Jews who prayed to Hashem and said: “Hashem, You’re my Father. You love me, help me – and they were saved! 

And now, on the eve of the holy day, don’t let your heart be faint, don’t give up, in spite of all the things you’ve done and how many times you have failed. Be strong in one thing: in believing that Hashem is a good and merciful Father; believe that He is waiting for your teshuva in any case.  

And even if it is difficult for you to resolve to change, believe that Hashem yitbarach, the good Father, is so waiting and expecting you to succeed in changing and to return to Him, that He really wants to give you the energies and the tools you need and help you change and be what He wants you to be.  

In that merit you will be able to ask, “slach na” (please forgive) from the depths of your heart and then be informed, “salachti kidvareicha” (I have forgiven, like you said)⁸. And Rabbeinu Hakadosh said that by saying “slach na one merits a chanuka⁹, and the word chanuka, says Rashi, means “a beginning”. When we plead “Slach na”, our Father in Heaven will give us the opportunity to truly begin anew! 

Gmar Chatima Tova! 

Editor’s Notes:

¹ A list of sins, often in alphabetical order, in the Vidui prayer that is recited on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Tikkun Chatzot HaLilah (Midnight Lamentations), Kriyat Shema al HaMitah (according to the Ari), and as an end-of-life prayer before death.  

² These words come from the Rosh Hashanah piyyut “היום הרת עולם” (“Today is the birth of the World”)  

³ Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) 4:22 

⁴ Devarim (Deuteronomy) 32:20 

⁵ Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 1:4 

⁶ Eliyahu Zuta of Tanna Devei Eliyahu 9 

⁷ Avshalom is mentioned primarily in Shmuel II (Second Book of Samuel), Chapters 13-19  

⁸ Bamidbar (Numbers) 14:20 

⁹ Likutei Eitzot (Advice), Chanukkah, #4