In what is likely the most emotional story in the entire Torah, Yosef was reunited with his father, Yaakov, whom he had not seen for over twenty years, ever since Yosef was sold by his brothers as a slave. Yosef revealed his identity to his brothers in Egypt, and then sent them to bring their father from Eretz Yisrael so the family could all live together in Egypt. At first, the Torah tells, Yaakov did not believe his sons when they told him that Yosef was alive and ruled over Egypt. But then he saw the wagons that Yosef had sent with his brothers to use to bring Yaakov:
וירא את העגלות אשר שלח יוסף לשאת אותו, ותחי רוח יעקב אביהם – “He saw the wagons that Yosef sent to carry him in, and the spirit of their father Yaakov was revived.” (45:27)
It seems that the sight of these wagons had a profound impact on Yaakov, causing his spirit to be “revived. “
The famous explanation of this pasuk is the one offered by Rashi, who writes that Yosef sent these עגלות (wagons) to allude to the mitzvah of עגלה ערופה, an obligation which applied in the times of the Bet Ha’mikdash when a murder victim was found in between two cities. This was the last Torah topic that Yaakov and Yosef had studied together before Yosef was sold as a slave, and thus Yosef sent the עגלות to show Yaakov that he was still committed to the Torah which Yaakov had taught him.
Highs and Lows
A different explanation, however, is offered by the Sheim Mi’Shmuel. He writes that the message Yosef was sending Yaakov was hinted to by the wheels of the wagons, which turn round and round, each part of the wheel going up and then going down. The wheel is symbolic of life, which also goes up and then down. There are times when we feel “high,” when we enjoy success and good fortune, and there are times when we feel “low,” when we find ourselves in turmoil and distress. This is true of everybody. We all have our highs and lows in life.
Somebody I know has relatives in Long Island whom he occasionally visits for Shabbat. He happened to spend Shabbat there not long after the 2016 Presidential election, and the next week he excitedly told me that David Friedman’s son lives in that community and prays in the same synagogue as his relatives. David Friedman had just been appointed by Donald Trump as the United States’ new Ambassador to Israel, and so my friend was excited to meet his son. It occurred to me that my friend had been to this community many times before, and had prayed together with Mr. Friedman’s son each time, without ever feeling there was anything special about it. But in an instant, once Mr. Friedman was appointed Ambassador, his son became somebody famous that people were excited to meet. The “wheel” suddenly turned, and he found himself up high.
Yosef was telling his father that he understood the notion that life is a wheel. When he was down, he realized that this condition would not last forever. And now, when he was up, he also realized that this condition of wealth and glory is not guaranteed to last.
This is why Yaakov reacted so enthusiastically to the sight of the wagons. He was overjoyed by the knowledge that his beloved son “got it,” that he understood one of the most important truisms of life – that it turns around like a wheel, full of ups and downs.
The importance and value of this message, that our lives resemble a wheel, cannot be overstated. This message tells us that when things are looking down, we should not feel too frustrated and upset, and when things are going well, we should not get carried away and feel too secure. Of course, we should enjoy our blessings and we should not be walking around in a state of gloom and dread waiting for misfortune to strike. We need to live with a sense of emotional balance, recognizing that Hashem gives us everything we have, and always gives us precisely what we need. Sometimes we receive more, sometimes we receive less. We should not get carried away when we have more or feel depressed when we have less, because this is how life works. It turns like a wheel.
The question, however, is why did Hashem make the world this way? Why did He make life so unpredictable? Why did He create the world in such a way that everybody has “ups” and “downs”?
The Money in the Safe
To answer this question, let us first examine a different question that many people struggle with – the tension between אמונה (faith) and השתדלות (personal effort).
As believing Jews, we know with certainty that Hashem determines how much we have. Our livelihood is dictated by G-d Himself, and thus no matter how hard we work, we will only receive the amount that Hashem decided we should have. And no matter how many days of work we miss because of illness, or how many bad deals we make, we will never receive anything less than the amount Hashem decided we should have. However, we also firmly believe that we need to work to earn a livelihood. We are not allowed to stay at home idly without trying to get a job or to open a business, and expect Hashem to somehow provide us with our family’s needs.
In light of these two basic beliefs, many people are confused and wonder how they should perceive their earnings. Should they feel as though they earned it through their work? After all, we believe that one needs to work for a living, so maybe they should credit their financial success to themselves. On the other hand, we believe that Hashem gives us what we have, and so it follows that we cannot take any credit for any money we earned. Which one is it?
The answer can be explained by way of analogy to a person who receives from somebody a safe with a combination lock. He is told that the safe contains $1 million, but he needs to open the lock in order to access the money. Naturally, this person spends a great deal of time and puts in vast efforts to find the combination. After consulting with mathematicians, he tries all the various combinations of numbers, trying them for many hours a day for several weeks. Finally, after trying thousands of different combinations, he gets the right one. He opens the safe, gets the $1 million, and is elated.
Let us ask ourselves, did he get that money himself, or was it given to him?
The answer is clear: the money was given to him. He had to work hard to access the gift, but it was a gift.
This is the proper outlook on our livelihood and earnings. Every dollar we earn is a gift from Above. Sure, we need to work hard to access that gift, but it is a gift. Some people are given a small gift that they need to work very hard to access, while others are given a large gift which they access with relative ease. But our livelihood is a gift from Hashem.
This is true not only about our livelihood, but about everything in our lives – shidduchim, our homes, our children, and everything else. We need to put in the effort to find a marriage partner, to purchase a home and to have and raise children, but ultimately, these are all really given to us as gifts by Hashem.
And this is why the “wheel of life” is so important. Why did Hashem make life work this way, with so many ups and downs? In order to remind us that everything is from Him. We see people, including ourselves, going up and down, showing us just how limited our control is, that regardless of our hard work and effort, ultimately, only Hashem decides what our fortune will be. The unpredictability of this “wheel” reminds us that He is in control and He gives us everything we have.
We need to recognize this reality of the “wheel of life” so that we will always remember that Hashem is the One who puts everything in our “safe.” Whatever we have is from Him, and He always gives us precisely what we need.
Choosing $50,000 Over $100,000
There is also another consequence of this recognition of the “wheel of life.” When we recognize that all people go through ups and downs over the course of life, we will stop feeling the need to have what other people have. If somebody else is currently “up” higher than we are, this should not bother us, because the wheel is constantly turning, and at different times different people will be higher and lower.
One of the most astounding studies I’ve ever read illustrates this point very powerfully.
A group of college students were asked which job they would choose if they had the option of two positions with the same hours and responsibilities, but one offered an annual salary of $50,000 and the other $100,000. Quite obviously, they all chose the higher paying job. The students were then asked whether they would choose this job in the following scenario: if they accepted the $50,000 job, their peers would earn $25,000, but if they took the $100,000 job, their peers would all earn $200,000.
Astoundingly, the majority of the students answered that if this were the choice, they would opt for the lower paying job, so they could earn twice as much as their peers.
What this study shows is that whether or not we enjoy financial success is purely a function of our perception and mindset. Assuming we have our basic necessities – food, shelter and clothing – everything else is all in our heads. A typical college kid sees $100,000 as a nice annual salary – but not if the people in his circle earn twice that amount. We measure success comparatively, how we are doing in relation to others.
The same is true of hard work. If a person goes to the gym and does a really hard workout, he feels gratified and feels good about himself afterward. But if that same person can’t afford to buy a car, and so he needs to walk back and forth to the train station while all his friends drive to work, he feels frustrated and upset. The fifteen-minute walk to the train is a lot easier than his workout in the gym, but in his mind, it is so much harder. Why? Because of his perception. Exercising in the gym is “normal,” so it’s acceptable; walking to the train station to get to work instead of driving, in his social circles, is not “normal,” and so it’s frustrating.
I rarely go to Manhattan, but on one occasion I was there with my wife to celebrate my birthday, and we passed by Saks Fifth Avenue and decided to stop in. Every minute I spent in the store, I felt poorer. Every piece of merchandise I saw was light years beyond my budget, and so each time I saw something I liked and then looked at the price tag, I felt poor. And each time I saw customers making purchases, I felt even poorer. I started thinking to myself, if all these people could pay thousands of dollars for clothing and jewelry, and I can’t, then I must be pathetic. I didn’t feel that way before I walked into the store; I felt deprived only when I saw the kind of luxurious lifestyle these customers were able to afford.
This experience reminded me that wealth and deprivation are all in our heads. It is all our perception, how we see things. We have what we need, because Hashem gives us all exactly what we need. But when we see other people with more, we start feeling deprived. The solution is to remember that life is a wheel, and wherever we are on this wheel is precisely where we are supposed to be.
When I was a young kollel student, my friends and I received $80 a week – and we were all happy. We had enough of an income for our basic necessities – a place to live, clothes and food – and so we were happy. We didn’t feel we needed any more, because we were all together in the same condition.
My brother-in-law, who is a teacher, told me that he once asked his class why it is that so many people today are unhappy. We hear stories of the old world, of our great-grandparents in Syria and of the Jews in Eastern Europe, about how they lived happy lives with so little, living in small, simple houses with a few changes of clothes and barely enough food so they weren’t hungry, but no more. We live in large, comfortable homes and have far more food than we need to survive, not to mention all the other perks and luxuries we enjoy. So why aren’t people today happy?
One of the students gave the right answer. He said back then, people appreciated life. They recognized that just being alive is a blessing and something to be excited about. Today, we don’t live with this appreciation. Because we have so much, we set our expectations based on what the people around us have, and so we feel frustrated and deprived.
We can avoid these feelings by changing our perception. We have exactly what we are supposed to have, and should not be fretting about what others have that we don’t.
“Going Away Season”
This is an important lesson for what in our community we might call “going away season” – the upcoming winter break, when many families go away on vacation. Those families who don’t have the means for a luxurious family vacation are likely to feel insecure and uneasy as they watch their peers fly off to all different places. They then tend to feel resentful, angry at the wealthier families who set such a high standard and make the others feel bad.
What we need to realize is that thinking and talking about this “problem” is most of the problem. We are not going to change anything by ranting and raving, by decrying the “going away” culture in our community. The more we see them as the problem, the more we sustain the problem – because the problem is in our minds, in our perception, in our assumption that what other people do during winter break should have any impact on what we should be doing during winter break. If others earn $200,000, this does not mean that our $100,000 salary is inadequate. So if other people’s earnings and vacations are making us upset, we need to stop thinking and talking about it. We should stop looking at people’s vacation pictures on social media. We should focus on enjoying our blessings, rather than worrying that we don’t have other people’s blessings. Thinking about what other people have simply programs our brains into thinking we don’t have what we need, when in fact we do. We are on the exact spot on the wheel where we should be, so we need to stop worrying about where on the wheel other people are.
In the chapter of Ashreh, which we recite three times a day in our prayer service, there is a pasuk which says, סומך ה' לכל הנופלים – “G-d supports all who fall.” The word סומך (“supports”) begins with the letter ס', which is round like a wheel. The notion of the “wheel of life,” this awareness that Hashem always puts us precisely where we need to be, is what supports us when we feel we are “falling” into frustration and despair. When we feel down about our lives, we receive support, encouragement and inspiration from the ס', from the message of the wheel. This message is what kept Yosef strong and confident during his years of unimaginable hardship, and this is what can keep us strong and confident when we feel down and upset.
Seeing Our Blessings
A group in Lakewood, New Jersey runs each year a job placement expo for kollel students to help them break into the workforce so they can begin professional careers with which to support their families. The project has been phenomenally successful, helping thousands gain invaluable work experience and get their “foot in the door” so they could build a career.
One year, the group booked the venue in the spring for the expo that was being planned for early February. But sometime in the fall, the place called them to cancel their reservation. A tire expo is always held there on those dates, and although they had initially cancelled the expo for that year, they changed their mind, and they were given priority.
The organizers were devastated. They had already put a great deal of work into the expo, and now it would have to be delayed until the next available date – in late March, over a month later.
As it turned out, New Jersey was hit by a snowstorm on the day for which the expo was originally scheduled. The New Jersey Turnpike was closed virtually the entire day. Nobody would have been able to get there. Baruch Hashem, the expo was held in late March and was very successful.
On that day, when the expo was being held, a Rabbi called the head of the project to tell him about that day’s page of Daf Yomi. The Gemara told about a system that was followed whereby all practitioners of a certain profession had a place to go to find work. This was the topic of that day’s page of Gemara which was being studied around the world. This was the appropriate day for finding people jobs.
Sometimes we get these little reminders from Hashem that He’s the one putting the money in our “safe,” that He is guiding and directing us precisely where we need to be. These reminders will help encourage us when we find ourselves low down on the “wheel,” and assure us that it will eventually turn upwards.
May we all find only blessing and happiness in the “safe” after putting in our effort to open it, and always be mindful of our loving Father who is always filling it for us, amen.