The 500,000% Dividends

Translated by Rabbi Lazer Brody

                                     
Our sages teach us that three things don’t come easy to a person: Torah, the World to Come, and the Land of Israel. Consequently, in obtaining one of these wonderful gifts, one will most certainly experience difficulties; comfort-zone efforts won’t get him anywhere. Even if a person is pious and free from sin, he won’t merit his portion in Torah, the World to Come, or the Land of Israel without paying a spiritual price.
 
Rebbe Arie Yehuda Leib Alter, the holy “Sfat Emet” of Gur of blessed and saintly memory, asks an amazing question: Why does the Gemara list the Land of Israel as one of the three things that don’t come easy? The Children of Israel made the eleven-day walk from Horev (Mount Sinai) to Kadesh Barnea on the southern border of the Land of Israel in only three days! Hashem wanted to make life easy for the Children of Israel, bringing them quickly to their holy homeland; but because of the sin of the spies, they ended up sojourning for forty years in the desert. So we see that we didn’t necessarily have to suffer to obtain the Land of Israel. How is that possible?
 
The Sfat Emet answers his own question with a profound explanation:
 
 As swiftly as the Children of Israel made the eleven-day journey in three days, they were still on the road and in the desert. They weren’t in the comforts of their own home. No travelling with babies and small children is ever easy. Each family certainly had to cope with a long list of minor difficulties and tribulations. Even today, we know how difficult a three-day road trip can be even in an air-conditioned family vehicle. The baby wails because he can’t find his pacifier. The kids fight in the back seat. Mom needs a restroom but the nearest gas station is sixty miles away. These are all genuine – although minor – tribulations.
 
The Sfat Emet says that had the Children of Israel accepted the minor tribulations with emuna and love, not only would this have atoned for their previous sins – it would have prepared them to receive the holy Land of Israel. Minor tribulations that are accepted with love spare us from much greater suffering.
 
The Gerrer Rebbe’s eye-opening conclusion is that the minor tribulations we accept with love save us inestimable torment, the type that people battle when they don’t accept life’s difficulties with emuna and love.
 
The Children of Israel whined and complained instead of accepting their reality. This transformed a potentially miraculous three-day journey and peacefully swift conquest of the Land of Israel to a forty-year trek in the desert and to endless wars that we are still fighting to this very day. Centuries of inquisitions, pogroms, torture, exile, terror, mass murder and suffering can all be traced back to the root cause of not accepting life’s minor difficulties with emuna.
 
Think about it – the difference between accepting one’s difficulties in life with emuna and complaining about them is at least the difference between a three-day trip and a forty year journey! Forty years equals 14,600 days (40 multiplied by 365). Forty years is a period 4,866 times longer than 3 days (14,600 divided by 3). The Torah is telling us that if a person doesn’t accept his minor difficulties in life with emuna and joy, he’ll have to suffer 4,866 times more! Let’s round this off to 5,000. In percentages, this is 500,000%! So if accepting minor tribulations with love would be described in investment terms, a person would earn 500,000% dividends!
 
Here’s an example: Suppose you misplace a $20 bill – you know you had that bill in your pocket or in your wallet, and now that you need it, you can’t find it. Most people become aggravated and either curse themselves or something else, Heaven forbid, and shout out epithets, “Where the heck is my $20 bill!” The whining and complaining only make things worse.
 
But let’s suppose that there’s a bright young person who has learned the powerful emuna lesson that minor tribulations accepted with love can spare us from 5000 times greater suffering! This young man starts thanking Hashem profusely for losing the $20 bill; he’s really jumping with joy because he knows that this is really a cheap substitute for a stern judgment that would have made him lose roughly 5000 times more, or $100,000! Who wouldn’t prefer a $20 loss to a $100K loss? That’s the power of accepting everything with love. And, if our minor tribulations are worth so much, just imagine what our big tribulations are worth? They are literally life-savers if we accept them with love. Who knows? If someone causes you grief and let’s say humiliates you in public, imagine that it’s saving you broken bones from a head-on collision! This is no exaggeration – the Gemara compares verbal abuse to murder; in that way, Hashem often uses verbal abuse or humiliation as a mitigation for a serious life-threatening disease or accident. If you knew that, you’d sing and dance whenever someone insulted you, and you’d thank Hashem all day long!
 
Once again, accepting life’s minor hardships with emuna and love not only cleanses us and atones for our misdeeds, but also prepares us as worthy receptacles for Divine abundance. May Hashem bless everyone with all their heart’s wishes for the very best, and with the full redemption of our people soon amen!