Sometimes we feel emotionally lost. We don’t know what to think and what to feel.
Sometimes we ask ourselves: “Should I feel satisfied, or frustrated? Should I feel happy, or unhappy? Should I feel nervous, or calm? Should I feel proud, or ashamed?”
When I start feeling this sort of confusion, my “go-to” response is one question that I ask myself, and it brings me clarity and settles my mind.
We will introduce this question by way of the Mishnah’s teaching in Pirkeh Avot: כל המכבד את התורה גופו מכובד על הבריות – “Whoever respects the Torah, he is respected by the people.”
Really?
If we want people to respect us we just need to have respect for the Torah? That’s all we need to do to earn respect?!?
Putting Hashem at the Center
The Gemara tells a fascinating story about Rabbi Abahu, a famous Rabbi who delivered public lectures with the help of an “interpreter” – a scholar who projected and communicated the Rabbi’s words to the audience. The students, of course, came to hear Rabbi Abahu, but the interpreter was the “loudspeaker,” so-to-speak, who communicated the Rabbi’s teachings to the people.
One day, the interpreter’s wife was taking to Rabbi Abahu’s wife and made a very foolish, and rude, comment. She said, “You know, my husband doesn’t really need your husband. He can give the class by himself. He’s just giving your husband respect by listening to what he says and then relaying it to the audience.”
Rabbi Abahu’s wife decided to share this remark with her husband.
His reply is very powerful, and conveys a critically important message about the kind of mindset we should be living with: מאי נפקא ליך מינה? מיני ומיניה יתקלס עילאה – “Why do you care? From me and from him the Almighty will be glorified.”
What Rabbi Abahu was saying, in essence, is that what matters is not us, but Hashem.
If we line up six zeroes one next to the other – 000000 – the value of this number is zero. But if we then put the number 1 at the beginning – 1,000,000 – we get a million.
We all do a lot of things in life. But if we do it all for ourselves, for our reputation, for our prestige, for our sense of pride – it’s not worth all that much. If we live for Hashem, however, then it’s like putting the number 1 at the beginning of a row of zeroes. It makes everything we do so precious and so valuable.
Actually, Rabbi Abahu teaches us something beyond that. He shows us that once we put Hashem in the middle, we can save ourselves so much heartache and anxiety.
If what drives us and motivates us is our own prestige, then we will ALWAYS be frustrated, unhappy and dissatisfied. We will ALWAYS be worried about what other people are thinking, what other people are saying, and what other people have or don’t have, and what they achieve and don’t achieve. Basically, we will be in competition with the entire world. And what are the chances of winning this competition against all of humanity?
The answer: ZERO.
If what drives us is our ego, our desire for respect, we will never win. There will always be people with more than us.
But if what drives us is the desire to do what Hashem wants, happiness is SO much easier to attain. If this is our motivation, then there’s just one question we need to answer: AM I DOING MY BEST?
That’s it. It doesn’t matter what the results are, what we achieve or don’t achieve, what other people achieve or don’t achieve, or what other people are thinking or saying about us. The only thing that matters is that we’re doing the best we can.
I Don’t Have to Do Everything!!!
I have my own personal “Rabbi Abahu story” that makes the point even clearer.
When I first started teaching in Magen David High School, I became very close with an exceptional group of 9th grade boys. They would come to my home one night a week to learn, and it was a very special experience. These boys were the “’cream of the crop,” and I received a lot of satisfaction learning with them.
At the end of 10th grade, however, eight out of the ten boys decided to leave the school. They felt they would be able to learn more elsewhere.
I was devastated. As a young Rabbi just starting out, it was exciting for me to have my group of boys to influence, and now that group was gone.
But then I realized something – THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME!!!!!
I entered this profession not for my own ego, but to help people grow. I did the best I could to help these boys, and now they’re moving on to other Rabbis who will help them reach the next level. מיני ומיניה יתקלס עילאה. I don’t have to do everything. I just have to do my job, and let the others do theirs.
It worked out very well – one of those eight boys ended up marrying my daughter…
If the focus is on our ego, then these kinds of things will upset us. We will feel we need to do everything, and when we can’t, we’ll be frustrated. But if the focus is on Hashem, then we will realize that all we need to do is our best. We just need to put in the effort, to do what we can, and don’t worry about who respects us, who appreciates us, who looks up to us, and who compliments us. That’s not what matters!!!
Just Do Your Best!
The Gemara gives another example of Rabbi Abahu’s outstanding humility. It tells that Rabbi Abahu was once being considered for the position of Rosh Yeshiva, to lead the most prestigious yeshiva in the world at the time. However, Rabbi Abahu knew that there was another worthy candidate for the job, another outstanding scholar, who had a lot of debts. This position would give that Rabbi an income so he could repay his debts and gain financial security. And so Rabbi Abahu told the people to appoint that other Rabbi.
This is the difference between living for oneself and living for Hashem.
If Rabbi Abahu lived for himself, he would have jumped at this opportunity. This is what he had spent his entire life working towards – receiving the most prestigious Rabbinic post! But Rabbi Abahu understood that this is not what it’s about. It’s not about him and his prestige. It’s about doing what Hashem wants. And there was no question in his mind that Hashem wanted him to help that other Rabbi who was struggling.
Living with humility makes life so much better. It makes life so much calmer. It makes life so much less stressful and frustrating. It allows us to relax and to feel content, without constantly and frantically trying to do more than we are capable of.
“Am I doing my best?” This is the only question that matters. We don’t have to worry about how we measure up to anybody else, or whether people appreciate or respect what we’re doing.
I recall once on a Friday morning receiving text messages from people alerting me to the predictions of horrible weather on Shabbat. I was scheduled to speak on Shabbat at Shaare Zion, and inclement weather on Shabbat often means some 200 fewer people in attendance. When I heard about the forecast of stormy weather, my initial reaction was disappointment. I invest so much time and hard work preparing my speeches. “What a shame,” I thought, “that so few people are going to hear the speech I worked so hard on.”
But then I realized…. THAT’S CRAZY! That’s a totally distorted way of looking at it. The ONLY THING that mattered was that I did my best. I prepared the best speech I could. I did what Hashem wanted from me. The rest is not in my hands, and is not for me to worry about.
מיני ומיניה יתקלס עילאה. I have to do what I can, and not feel like I have to do everything.
A woman once came to speak with me because her young son was seriously ill. This woman wept bitterly talking about her son, and all she wanted was for me to tell her that her son would be ok. She was hardly observant, and she was not interested in any sort of religious guidance. All she wanted was reassurance.
I didn’t know want to do. I had no idea how to respond. What could I tell her? How did I know what would happen to her son?
I told myself in my mind: “Joey, just do the best you can. You don’t have to have the perfect response.”
And I decided that I should tell her the exact same thing.
“All you can do is the best you can,” I told her. “Be a good mother. Be loving and kind. Be attentive to all your children’s needs. You can’t solve every problem. There are no guarantees of anything. Just do the best you can.”
There is no more calming feeling in the world than this, than saying, “I just have to try.” This is the best way to clear our heads.
When we feel emotionally lost, when we feel confused and unsure of ourselves, we just have to ask ourselves one simple question: “Am I doing my best?” As long as the answer is “yes,” we have nothing to worry about.
The Most Beautiful Prayer
There is a very famous story which may or may not be true, and which has been told about several different Rabbis.
The story is about an ignorant Jewish man who walked into shul on Yom Kippur. This was a shul of very pious and knowledgeable scholars of Kabbalah, whose prayers were undoubtedly recited with great intensity and with profound thoughts and intentions.
This man could not even read Hebrew, but he desperately wanted to pray. The only thing he knew was the Hebrew alphabet, and so he said the names of the Hebrew letters, over and over again. This is how he spent Yom Kippur – reciting the letters of the alphabet.
The story goes that the Rabbi of this shul dreamt the next night that the prayers recited in his shul on Yom Kippur were especially powerful and brought forgiveness to the entire Jewish Nation. And the most powerful prayer of all was the prayer recited by that simple Jew, who repeated the alphabet over and over.
Whether or not this story is true, the message is definitely true.
The most beautiful prayer is the prayer recited with the most effort. And the most beautiful ANYTHING that we do is that which we do with the most effort. The results don’t matter.
The Hebrew alphabet recited by a simple, ignorant Jew can be more precious that the deep, intense prayers of great scholars of Kabbalah – because he did the best he could, and that’s what it’s all about.
The only way to live with this mindset is to put Hashem at the center of our lives, to focus on doing what He wants. If our ego is at the center, then we’ll never be satisfied, because we’ll always be comparing what we do to what other people do. As long as we focus on what Hashem wants, we will be satisfied knowing that we did what we could – which is all He ever expects of us.
Redefining “Victory”
Let’s ask ourselves the following question: When do we “win” in life? How do we know that we’ve “won”?
Does a person “win” when he gets accepted to a prestigious yeshiva, seminary, or college?
Does a person “win” when he or she marries the “right” person from the “right” family?
Does a person “win” when he earns a certain amount of money, when he buys a certain kind of car, or when he buys a certain kind of home?
Does a person “win” when people look up to him?
How much money, fame or children does a person need to claim “victory” in life? Or can a person not claim victory until all his children are married to the “right” people from the “right” families?
These questions only make sense if the person puts himself and his ego at the center. But if Hashem is at the center, none of this has anything to do with “winning.” If we put Hashem at the center, we “win” by doing the best we can.
Once when I was in my parents’ home I saw a sports magazine from 1999, which named the “sports person of the year.” The top “sports person” was actually a whole team – the New York Yankees, who won three World Series titles at the end of the 1990s. I read through the names of the players. They were all retired by the time I was reading this, and nobody was talking about them anymore. A number of the players were discovered to have been taking steroids.
Are they “winners”?
Then I looked to see the magazine’s “runners up” for the title of “sports person of the year.”
They were: Lance Armstrong and Tiger Woods, both of whom were later disgraced.
Our society has the wrong definition of “victory.” We don’t “win” by being famous. We “win” by doing what Hashem wants us to do to the best of our ability, whatever the results are.
“G-d is On Our Side!”
Living with this mindset affects not only the way we feel about ourselves, but also the way others view us.
A man once told me that Payless was renting space in a building he owned, and at one point, Payless hired a new CEO who had come over from Walmart. This fellow was very aggressive, and he told his staff after being hired, “At Walmart, we don’t deal with people – we crush them.” And this was the way he did business.
He was not happy with the terms of the lease, but instead of sitting down with the owner in good faith to renegotiate, he decided instead to sue him. The owner had not done anything wrong, but it didn’t matter. This was the new CEO’s way of doing business.
They arranged a meeting, and the CEO said to the owner of the building, “Do you realize who we are, whom you’re dealing with? One of every six shoes sold in this country is sold by Payless!!”
“That’s very nice,” the building owner said, “but you have no justification for bringing a lawsuit. I’ve done nothing wrong. And G-d is on our side. He’ll do what is just.”
Sure enough, Payless lost the lawsuit, and not too long afterward the CEO was fired and Payless rented even more properties from this fellow.
Sometime later, he was speaking to the people from Payless, and they told him, “You know, when you said, ‘G-d is on our side,’ we didn’t know what to do with that. We’re really not used to hearing people talk that way in business!”
When we make our lives about Hashem, and bring Him into the equation, it changes everything – and people notice. We can’t be intimidated or “bought.” We are calmer and more relaxed. If it’s all about us, then we’re frantically running about in an endless rat race, always competing and trying to outdo everybody else. But if it’s about Hashem, then we don’t have to compete. We just have to do our best. And people will eventually come to respect that.
כל המכבד את התורה גופו מכובד על הבריות. We might think at first that to earn respect, we need to run around trying to make an impression. But our wise Sages in Pirkeh Avot teach us otherwise. We need to be מכבד את התורה, to make Hashem our priority, which allows us to live with greater calm, greater serenity and greater dignity. And when we live this way, we will earn people’s respect and admiration.
Praying to be Dirt
In conclusion, we can now understand what otherwise might strike us as perhaps the most bizarre passage in our daily prayer service.
In the conclusion of the Amidah prayer, we ask, נפשי כעפר לכל תהיה – “my soul shall be like dirt to everyone.”
Dirt?!? This is what we’re praying for? We want to be like dirt?!
Yes, we do.
Not that we don’t want to have self-respect. To the contrary. We want self-esteem – and this comes from putting Hashem in the center, and not ourselves. We want our lives to be directed towards serving Hashem, because when we live this way, we can feel content and satisfied knowing that we’re doing the best we can. We pray to be like dirt – not to care about our own honor and prestige, but to instead focus on doing what Hashem expects of us, so we can live with peace of mind and serenity.
So the next time we are feeling anxious, insecure, unsure about ourselves, and dissatisfied, let’s ask ourselves this simple but powerful question: Am I trying? Am I doing my best?
If we are, then nothing else matters – because this is all Hashem will ever expect of us.