As we all know, Korach got into a lot of trouble. He had a whole philosophy, and he started a revolution. Eventually, he and his people were swallowed up, and burned and it was a tragic ending- All from a man who could have been great. His whole problem came about because he was jealous of a job position that his younger cousin got, that he felt he should have been next in line for. Korach could have been great, but he went sour over this jealousy, and due to his lack of realization that the job you’re given is the job you’re supposed to have.
The Steipler says that had Korach waited, there would have been something better for him, but he made this mistake.
This is an important lesson for everyone We all have a position or job, and it might not be the most glamorous one, but that’s the job that we have to do. The sefer Ki Atah Imadi tells the story of a man who had always wanted to be a bus driver in Israel. He took lessons, and finally got the job. He was very excited to begin his bus route. To his dismay, however, he was assigned a very quiet, sleepy route with very few passengers- people from a nursing home who had to be dropped off at a therapy center. It was boring and slow. After passing more crowded and bustling stops for a while, he decided this wasn’t what he’d trained for, and so he switched himself to a more crowded important route. He went to the kotel and filled the bus with ladies and babies and lots of excitement. The next day, when he got to work, his manager noticed that he’d sold a tremendous amount of tickets the day before, and asked him about it, because they’d never sold so many tickets on that nursing home route. The driver explained that he actually didn’t take his usual route, he took a different one. The manager reprimanded him, “What?! You can’t do that! Those old ladies must get to their therapy! What were you thinking?”
The bus driver told him he’d wanted some excitement. The manager explained that his job wasn’t about excitement. There was a system, and he’d get paid for doing his job within that system, regardless of how many people were picked up.
That’s our lesson- whatever our job is. If you’re a teacher, it doesn’t matter if you’re affecting two students or tens of students or a small class. As long as you do your job and bring out their potential, you’ll get paid.
There’s a story about Isaac Perlman, the famous violinist. The authenticity of the story has been questioned, but the lesson is there nonetheless:
He was once scheduled to to play a difficult, challenging piece, but in the middle of the performance, one of the strings on his violin snapped. Everything stopped. Being handicapped, he’d now have to put on his braces, take his crutches and leave the stage to go get another violin. But instead, he paused for a moment, then indicated for the conductor to start again, and he played this beautiful piece with a missing string. No one could believe how wonderfully he played. Everyone cheered and asked him how he did it. He answered, “Sometimes it’s the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
In our lives, every one has a job with its own challenges.
A man once went to see Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. He was severely handicapped, and it took him 45 minutes to walk two blocks to shul. He wanted to know if he was obligated to pray with a minyan. Rav Shlomo Zalman said he wasn’t obligated.
The man asked if it was a leniency and said he didn’t want a leniency. Rav Shlomo Zalman told the man that because he was handicapped, he was not obligated. The man replied that he was not handicapped, it just took him longer. That’s a beautiful attitude. No one is handicapped. Everyone has what they need, to do what they must do. It may take longer or shorter; or be more exciting or less exciting, but we don’t our choose our jobs. G-d chooses our jobs.
Rav Wolbe has a beautiful thought on the beracha we make in the morning
שעשה לי כל צרכי
G-d made for me, everything that I need. Simply, this means everything we need physically. But it’s not just physical. Rav Wolbe says it’s everything we need to fulfill our mission in life.
I once heard another beautiful thought about this: We say this beracha specifically for our shoes, (on Tisha B’Av and Yom Kippur, when we don’t wear leather shoes, we don’t say this beracha),because if we have shoes, we can do what we need to do.
But there’s a lesson here. Why is a beracha that says “I have everything I need” about shoes?
Someone told me that a teacher did the following exercise with her second or third grade class: She told them all to take their shoes off and put them in the middle of the room. Then she told everyone to grab any two shoes and put them on. Of course, they didn’t fit properly, and they couldn’t get anything done with the wrong shoes. They all gave the shoes back and took their own. The teacher told them that it’s like that in life as well: Just like someone else’s shoes might look nice, but if they don’t fit, it doesn’t work, so too, everyone has a mission or job in life. If a job doesn’t fit you, it won’t work. And just like I have my shoes, and you have your shoes and we don’t wear other people’s shoes, that’s the lesson of שעשה לי כל צרכי - G-d made everything for me.
That was the mistake of Korach. He wanted to wear someone else’s shoes. He didn’t realize that it’s not about the exciting bus route. It’s about playing the music with the instrument that G-d gave you.
Have a wonderful day and a Shabbat Shalom.