The Blessing of Wealth

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

A person’s abundance is not material. It is spiritual and depends on Divine input, as King Solomon says in the Book of Proverbs, “Hashem’s blessing brings wealth.” I have seen people who have a small amount of money, but never go into debt and lack nothing. They have Hashem’s blessing. How do they manage? No one knows. The plain facts are that they have very little money but have it all. That is the reality and we cannot argue with it. On the other hand, there are people who earn huge amounts of money but have nothing – they have to borrow money to buy food!
 
From an emuna perspective, this phenomenon is simple to understand. The world operates according to Hashem’s laws as elaborated in the Talmud, which says that blessing resides in a person’s house in the merit of the honor that a husband gives his wife.
 
In the Mishnah, Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta gives us another important tip for life: “The Holy One, Blessed Be He did not find a vessel to sustain blessing other than peace.” When a person closes his channels of blessing by not honoring his wife sufficiently and damages the vessel of peace – even if he is one hundred per cent justified – they remain hermetically sealed. The fact that he is justified does not help him.
 
If the husband would see G-d and not the “rod of reproof” – the role that his wife is currently fulfilling – he would know that he is the one who is at fault. He would not be angry with the rod at all and would not be upset in the slightest with his wife. Certainly, he would not be angry with G-d, Who wielded the rod. Rather, he would submissively take an accounting of his actions and attempt to rectify them.
 
These are all important channels of abundance for every person. If someone feels any type of resentment against these channels, abundance ceases its flow. A person’s lack of joy, or feeling that he has nothing to live for, is a sign of clogged channels of abundance.
 
There is another, more general channel of abundance: The Nation of Israel. Every Jew is a channel through which abundance flows to the world. The Nation of Israel is one nation, one soul and one body. Thus, when a person resents a Jew anywhere in the world, he closes the flow of abundance that he received from that Jew’s channel.
 
When a person is careful not to find fault with any Jew, who is a letter of the Torah, then the Torah is perfect, with no shortcoming or blemish. The Torah then restores the soul, because then, specifically, we merit to love the Torah and feel the sweet taste of Torah that restores the soul – because it has no shortcoming, as above. And then we merit diligence, as above.”
 
This is written about the spiritual abundance of the Torah, which is certainly closed if a person enters into a dispute with any Jew in the world. Material abundance is drawn down by spiritual abundance. When the channel of spiritual abundance is closed, material abundance immediately dries up. Thus, a person should thank G-d daily for all Jews and love all Jews, without exception.
 
If a person feels anger or resentment, they must work on their emuna and teshuva. They must thank G-d for the suffering that they have (or had)  and believe that the suffering is from G-d and for her very best. They must remember that the person who caused them the pain is there for them to do teshuva and obliterate any anger or resentment until their heart is clean and pure, filled with love of Israel.
 
Erasing resentment from one’s heart is like cleaning house for Pesach. To erase all the resentment, residual anger and sorrow of one’s past, one must thank G-d for everything and continue to do so until nowhere in his heart does he feel that something is not good, and harbors no negative memories. When he believes that everything that happened to him and all the suffering that he endured until this point was for his eternal good – and when he thanks G-d for everything in his past, he will erase that which he sees as negative.
 
Like Pesach cleaning, a person needs to work hard to acquire a clean heart. He must believe that there is nothing but G-d and that it is not a particular person who does him wrong; not his father, mother, wife or employer. He must work on believing that all is G-d and that all the different types of suffering that he endures from various people is G-d’s will and for his ultimate good!
 
G-d didn’t will this pointlessly. He willed it for your good. Thank Him, clean your heart so that you will have no bad memories from the past, and you will be pure and all the channels of abundance will open for you!