Bull or Bear

Some professionals pride themselves in their ability to remain aloof from their clients’ problems. That’s something I never learned to do. Hashem in His infinite love helped me to win a bout with atrial fibrillation; He did me a priceless favor and gave me a resilient cardiac muscle because He knows how I take people’s problems to heart.
 
Here’s an example: four different investment and/or mortgage bankers used to write to me at the frequency of at least once a month. Ten years ago, before the mortgage and general financial meltdown of 2008, all four of them had high-six or low-seven figure annual incomes, houses in fancy neighborhoods, swimming pools in their back yards, and children learning in the most expensive academic institutions. Except for one, that’s all gone now. One of the four still drives a Cadillac as a reminder of past glory and a last straw to preserve his image, but he can’t afford food for Shabbat.
 
Recently, I was speaking to a sophomore from Babson Institute, one of the best business and finance universities in the USA. While describing the merits of Talmudic study, I referred to the financial world and mentioned Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. The young man honestly did not know who I was talking about! In recent years, some of the biggest names on Wall Street have disappeared into thin air. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the some of the only giants left standing from the financial major leagues of yesteryear, but as far as I know, they’re severely wobbling at the knees and are fighting for their lives too.
 
My heart breaks for the devastated bankers, traders, and brokers of yesteryear who don’t have emuna and personal prayer to fall back on. One newspaper reporter visited a popular off-Wall Street bar when the stock exchange was closed last year, and found leading financial executives drowning their woes in their wine. One such broker commented, "Nothing will be like it was before…the world as we know it is going down." True, the world is changing. His world – the world of money and materialism – is in truth going down. Our world – the world of emuna and spiritual growth – is on the way up. Choose which you’d like to invest in.
 
In the language of finance, emuna today is a bull market, only up. Money is a bear market, only down. The bull or the bear, it’s every person’s choice.
 
Right before Rosh Hashanah 5769, when the US-triggered global financial crisis came to a head, I had almost convinced a family from Washington, DC to sell everything they own and move to Israel. The next day, rumors on Wall Street that the US Government would be infusing $700 billion in emergency economic measures sent nose-diving stocks on a power surge skyward. The family sent me an email gleefully informing me that they were scrapping their Aliya plans. “Everything’s OK,” they wrote, “the stocks are on the way back up…”
 
It’s tragic to see how people fool themselves. America’s financial crisis is far from over. The USA is simply printing more money to cover domestic debts. The national debt as of now, Septemeber 2017, is an already alarming $19+ trillion. Ten years ago, when the debt was “only” $10 trillion, there was legislation proposed to enable an increase in the statutory limit on the public debt to $11.315 trillion, and no more. Somebody took a big broom and conveniently swept that legislation under the rug.
 
Meanwhile, the current environmental calamities in America isn't helping American coffers either. Between Harvey and in the south, wildfires in the west and Irma heading toward the east coast, the USA could be facing a major fuel shortage down the road too. To add to Uncle Sam’s headaches, no one knows what North Korea's or nuclear-aspiring Iran's next move will be.
 
Why is Hashem giving America so much trouble? The USA barely had a chance to recover from recent years’ hurricanes, financial meltdowns, floods, crazy weather and more recently tornados. What’s next?
 
Ah, the layback summer months, complete with a bungalow in the Catskills. Many of our beloved brothers and sisters in America are back in the mode of the baseball scores, what’s for dinner, and what’s on TV tonight. Is this what Hashem’s asking for? Does Hashem care about the make and model of car that you drive?
 
So many are like bears in winter. But the difference is that the spiritual hibernators sleep all year round, not just in the winter.
 
Hashem doesn’t want a single one of his beloved sons and daughters in the USA to miss the boat of Moshiach and the full redemption of our people. America’s current difficulties therefore bear a striking resemblance to the plagues of ancient Egypt. In both cases, Hashem uses harsh tribulations to pry the Jewish people from bondage. True, slavery in Egypt was characterized by toil and torment. In America, slavery is velvet-lined; it’s hard to break the bonds of lust and physical amenities. If that’s not enough, for the past forty years, a deadly quiet holocaust of assimilation has been diminishing America’s Jewish population as well. That certainly doesn’t make Hashem happy.
 
Rashi (see his commentary on Exodus 4:9) explains that when Hashem punishes a nation, He first destroys their idols. People failed to see Rashi’s principle in action during 9/11/2001, when the Twin Towers of the World in New York City (symbol of America’s economic idol) was destroyed, and the Pentagon (symbol of America’s military-might idol) near Washington, DC came under attack as well, incurring serious damage. Now that people can no longer trust the dollar, maybe they’ll start trusting in Hashem…
 
When a person is fortunate to be enveloped in a cloud of the Divine Presence, no evil can befall us. You can live on the Gaza border and not even think about the rocket and mortar fire if you flow with Hashem and live the life of emuna. Yet, one can be closed up in a twenty-room mansion in Great Neck or Potomac, with electronic surveillance and round-the-clock security, yet live in complete fear.
 
Hashem is letting each of us pick our options. He wants to free us from bondage, but we must have a desire to be free. We decide where you want to hang our hat. The Bull or the Bear, it’s your choice.