We have been talking about the topic of humility, and we're going to see how important humility is, specifically for Rosh Hashanah, which should give us all a bit of incentive to get back into the topic.
The Gemara in Berachot tells the story of a pious man who gave a large denomination of dinar to a poor man on Erev Rosh Hashanah during a year of famine. When he came home, his wife asked him where the money was. He told her he gave it to a poor person. The Gemara then tells us, והקניות אשתו /His wife upset him,” and he went to sleep in the cemetery.
At the cemetery he overheard two spirits saying, “Let's go and listen to what's going to be happening, in the next world.” One of them came back and said, “I heard that whoever plants in the first planting…there's going to be a hailstorm.”
The pious man heard this and was able to save his seeds (as it was a famine season, there was a shortage of seeds) for the second planting. The whole world’s crops got wiped out, but his didn’t , and he became a very wealthy man.
There are many lessons to learn from this story. The first lesson is that this man was supposed to be blessed. How do we see that? Because he got blessed, obviously.
And he gave charity- so wonderful- we see that you give charity and you get blessed. But that wasn't enough. He had to add a little bit more. His wife upset him, and he ended up sleeping in the cemetery. That package deal brought him success. So, if you want a segula for success: Give charity on Erev Rosh Hashanah, sleep in a cemetery on the night of Rosh Hashanah and make sure your wife gets you upset. (Obviously, that is said in jest).
So, what is the lesson here?
In the sefer Or Yisrael Rav Yisrael Salanter explains that the term והקניות אשתו
means that his wife upset him. He was bothered, by what his his wife said, in his heart. He says that this emotion, whether it was a little anger or upsetness , was a lack in the trait of humility.
People that are humble do not get upset by things like this. He proves it from other Gemarot. Hillel is called the Great Anav, and they prove it from the fact that he did not get upset on Erev Shabbat when people tried to get him upset while he was taking a shower.
We're not going to go into details of that story, but he proved from that Gemara that a sign of humility is that someone is not upset or frazzled by outside people.
Now, this pious man did get upset by his wife, and therefore he was lacking in the Middah of Anava/Humilty. And this is our point: What's most necessary for success on Rosh Hashanah is to be humble. That's the most important trait you can have (we will elaborate on this in a future lesson).
So here we have this pious man who just got upset. How is he going to go into Yom HaDin with this upset feeling in his heart? It has to be uprooted. And, how do you get Anava?
The Mishna in Pirkei Avot says a person should be extremely humble, because in the end, everyone is going to be in the grave. That causes a person to become humble, because it causes you to realize that you're not here for forever.
This pious man didn’t have weeks or months to work on his Middot Rosh Hashana was the next morning. He needed to have an immediate “defibrillator” to snap him out of it. He had to do something drastic, so he decided to spend the night in a cemetery and get the lesson banged into him. The next morning, he’d wake up in a state of humility and be ready for Rosh Hashanah.
This is extremely important. We all want success. This is the secret to success: humility. The Chida, one of the greatest of the greats, writes in Morah B’Esba (chapter nine, letter 501) where he talks about mussaf (we've discussed in the past how important this musaf prayer is) that, “When you pray, you have to make yourself like you're nothing.” And he says in very strong terms that the Gemara says that if previous generations were like angels, we’re like humans, and if they're like humans, we're like donkeys. And he says, if that's the case, if they're like donkeys, ( this was 200 years ago), we are like mosquitoes.
He adds that to be called a mosquito is already a level. You could be an amoeba; you could be even smaller than that. You could be an electron or a neutron, not even a full atom. Our level of existence is so small.
On one hand we're great because of the generation that we live in, and everything we have to overcome. But at the same time, what are we, what are we deserving of? We're coming to God as if He owes us, but He doesn't owe us anything! That humility is the secret to success.
We have three weeks. It's not Erev Rosh Hashanah, and nobody got us angry. We have time to work on humility, which we've been doing, and B’Ezrat Hashem, will continue to do.
Some people think that Bitachon is the secret to success but we’re going to see that the secret to success, at least at this time of year, is humility.
Have a wonderful day.