The seventh advantage of the Baal Bitachon over the alchemist is the following : Money is no guarantee of food. The Hovot HaLevavot points out:
שבעל הכימיה אפשר שלא יגיע אל מזונו
He can have all the money but it doesn’t guarantee food.
במה שיש אצלו מן הזהב והכסף,
All the gold and silver aren’t a guarantee
Because sometimes there’s no food available.
מפני שלא יהיה האוכל נמצא בעירו בקצת העתים,
It is possible that the alchemist will not be able to buy food with his gold and silver due to no food being available in the city
Money doesn’t guarantee food.
The Hovot HaLevavot brings as proof a story from Yehezkel- during the time of the destruction of the Bet Hamikdash, when they had money, but they threw it in the street because it had no value:
שנאמר (יחזקאל ז יט): כספם בחוצות ישליכו
When neither silver or gold could save them
This brings to mind some old pictures I saw way back in elementary school, in social studies textbook. One showed men from the prosperous era before the great Depression, smoking cigars rolled in $100 bills. They had so much money they were smoking $100 bills! Then, just a few pages later, there was a photo of a Wall Street man dressed in a suit, selling apples out of a wheelbarrow. There comes a time when all the money you have can’t bring you food.
Rav Eliyahu Dessler, one of the great thinkers of our time, had a father that was both a rabbi and businessman, and lived through both World Wars. When preparing to send his son off to England prior to WW2, he taught Rav Eliyahu a valuable lesson.
His father took him up into in the attic and showed him a suitcase full of Deutschmarks- about $1,000,000 of German currency. He explained that prior to the First World War; he had been a wealthy man. Then world’s economy fell into an upheaval. He wanted to secure his assets but he didn’t trust the real estate market. He thought the German mark was a safe bet, so he converted all his assets to the German Mark. In the end, it turned out to be totally worthless. He had saved the suitcase all those years as reminder that just because you have a suitcase full of money, it doesn’t mean you are getting anything out of it.
It’s an important point that we can’t stress enough. You have to have the Bitachon, and sometimes it’s harder to have Bitachon because you have the suitcase of money.
There’s another story, about one of the Rothschilds, and although I can’t locate or verify the source for the story, it teaches us this same lesson, albeit in a morbid way.
Rothchild went into his safe one Friday afternoon and somehow got locked in it. Because it had been a long, holiday weekend, he was stuck there until Tuesday morning, at which time it was discovered that he had died in the safe. What’s more, scrawled on the wall was the message,
“I,.....Rothschild surrounded by money, don’t have any food to eat,” written in his own blood, apparently taken from his pricked vein.
(if anyone can verify the sources for this story, please email at rabbisutton@gmail.com)
On a more positive note, the Hovot HaLevavot assures us:
-בוטח בה' לא ייבצר ממנו מזונו בכל עת ובכל מקום עד סוף ימיו,
If you rely on Hashem you’ll always have your food, until the end of your days.
There are many stories throughout history, from the Holocaust etc, that show how people got their bread exactly like this, until the end of their days.
The Hovot HaLevavot quotes:
ברעב פדך ממות (איוב)
In a time of famine Hashem saved you from death.
(תהלים כג א): ה' רועי לא אחסר,
G-d is my Shepard I do not lack.
ואמר (תהלים לז יט): לא יבשו בעת רעה ובימי רעבון ישבעו:
They won’t be embarrassed in time of evil and they will be satiated in the time of famine.
Tomorrow we will share more stories of the Baal Bitachon, but for now our lesson is this:
Without Bitachon you really don’t have anything.