Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. We are going to give one last class on the topic of meaning, purpose and accomplishment in life.
Quite often people seemingly aren’t doing anything with their lives, and I use the word seemingly because they don't realize what they are accomplishing. I'd like to share a beautiful story about the great Tanna Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, known as the Rabbi of Ed Od Milevado/ There is nothing else but God. No one could touch him, nothing could impact him. He was the one who was so poor that his daughter had no money for oil, but he told her, “The One that says that oil should light say that vinegar should light,” and miraculously, with vinegar, the candles stayed lit the entire Shabbat. He's the one that a snake bit, but the snake died instead of him.
He was a powerful man. And every single day, the Gemara says in Berachot, a heavenly echo comes out and says, The whole world is sustained (getting their economy) in the merit of Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa, but he himself survived on nothing but a pound of carob from week to week. As the story goes, his neighbor, who was a bit mean, decided to taunt his wife over her lack of funds. One Friday afternoon, when they had no money for food, Rabbi Hanina’s wife put wood in the oven to make it seem like she was cooking, so as not to be embarrassed. This neighbor purposely asked to use her oven and went to open it hoping to see an empty oven and embarrass her, but God made a miracle. The oven was full of bread. Even after this miracle, Mrs Hanina ben Dosa just couldn’t handle the pressure anymore. She told her husband, “That's it. We need to ask God for help. I can't survive anymore.”
So, they prayed and God made a miracle. A gold bar came down from heaven. That was it. They were millionaires overnight.
But that night, they both had a dream. They saw all the Sadikim in Gan Eden each had a table with three legs, but they only had a table with two legs. The Golden Bar they got from Heaven took one of the legs away from their table.
The Yaarot Dvash asks, First of all, why is it that we only have three leg tables in Olam Haba? Isn’t that uncomfortable? And why did they lose a leg? What was wrong? They were going to do to with all the money? They’d use it for charity, for supporting their families and all good things… so why lose a leg on their table for that? The Yaarot Dvash answers that the three pillars that the person's Olam Haba stands on are the same pillars that the world stands on: Torah learning, Avodat Hashem/serving Hashem (through the Bet Hamikdash and Tefila) and Gemilut Hasadim/acts of kindness. When Rav Hanina ben Dosa got the gold bar, he lost the leg of kindness. Why? Because before he had the money, when he couldn't give money, he yearned to give the money.
God says that when someone wants to do a good deed and isn’t able to do it, God considers it like he did it. Rav Hanina ben Dosa had a tremendous yearning to do, and God considered it the most perfect doing. It was infinite because he was connecting up with God's kindness. But when a person actually does something, how much money can he give? $10 million a year? $100 million a year? It's finite. He couldn’t support the whole world his gold bar. On the other hand, in his previous state of poverty he was the conduit for the parnasa of the entire world; he was supporting the world!
With the gold, he downgraded from supporting the world to supporting his community, and he was no longer considered the greatest philanthropist of all times. Our rabbis tell us that this is not just a one-time event. It says even today, there are people that the world is supported through, and yet they themselves live on very little. They may feel like they're not accomplishing; they go to parlor meetings and they can't make any pledges, but they might be the one, or you might be the one, that's supporting the world!
You don't know what you're accomplishing by your good thoughts, your good deeds, and your yearning.
That's our lesson for the day.