Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness. We're continuing with the topic of the week, which is that ultimately, all we can do in life is control what's going on inside of ourselves, how we react to situations and the choices that we make based on the situations that we're in. We cannot control anything outside of us, because that's ultimately up to God. We also spoke about the outlook of Do and not accomplish and the need to be in control, with the importance of realizing what you are in control of.
I'd like to share a beautiful story that happened with Lev L’Achim, a beautiful organization in Eretz Yisrael that works on spreading religion among the Israeli populace. One way they raise money, besides coming to America to fundraise, is that many people in Israel who see the need for this organization give a Hora’at Keva, a monthly payment that comes directly out of their bank account. It all adds up, you know, a hundred dollars a month, $36 a month…etc.
One Avrech, a man learning in Kollel who obviously does not make a lot of money, had a $10 monthly Horaat Keva, so he was basically giving $120 a year. Then the rabbi that runs the organization, Rabbi Sorotzkin, or maybe his accountant pointed out that this specific person had increased his monthly pledge from $10 to $11, which seemed interesting – a one dollar increase in the pledge. He reached out to the man to find out what the story twas, and the man explained that at the time he had made the original pledge, his wife had given birth and wasn't working. Now she was back at work, so he had a little bit more money and wanted to increase his pledge from $10 to $11 a month. Rabbi Sorotzkin was very moved by this man's love for the organization and desire to give, even a smaller number. The Rabbi told the story at a parlor meeting and someone in the crowd was very impressed, and raised his pledge from $18,000 to $36,000.
Rabbi Sorotzkin continued to share the story at many events and it was a very successful pitch.
He decided to share this with Rav Shteinman zlb, and Rav Shteinman told him, “You're missing the point. Why are you so impressed by the impact of the dollar at all the future parlor meetings? Why aren't you impacted by the fact that he gave the additional dollar?”
To me, that's really the point here. We're always measuring things by what the outcome is, what happened on the outside.
But at the end of the day, this guy gave a dollar. That's something. And there's the impact of that, what it meant for him to give his dollar.
That's our story for the day.