I once witnessed the following scene in a busy shul in Brookyln with lots of minyanim.
A young man approached someone to ask for tzedakah, explaining that he was getting married and needed help.
The man handed him his credit card and told him to charge $52.
Just then, someone else passed by, and this fellow asked him if he could help. The guy pulled out a $1 bill and handed it to him. He said, "Thank you."
He then turned to the first fellow, who had given him his card, and said, "Look, I need a pair of nice shoes for the wedding. Maybe you can give a little more?"
At first I was astonished. That second guy gave him $1 and got a "thank you," but the first, who offered him $52, got a request for more. How could that be?
Very quickly, though, I understood why this happened.
The "$1 guy" isn't going to do much more, but the "$52 guy" is capable of more. Someone who gave just one dollar cannot be expected to give anything beyond that, but someone who is able and willing to give $52 is likely to be able and willing to give even more than that.
Sure enough, the first guy told the fellow to charge the card for an additional $50.
I believe this is the mistake that so many of us make – especially this time of year – which hinders our growth, which stops us from becoming better.
We all see ourselves as pretty good people, or even very good people – and we are right. We are good people. The problem is that although we give $52, we want to be left alone like the guy who gave $1. Specifically, because we feel good about who we are – as we certainly should!!! – we feel that it's enough, that we don't need to try any harder.
I imagine that if I had accomplished by the age of 20 all that Rav Ovadia Yosef zt"l accomplished by that age, I would feel pretty content. He was already an outstanding scholar who had mastered pretty much all of Torah. But he was not content. Not at all. He went on to not only write dozens of important books of halachah and answer untold numbers of halachic questions, but to devote himself tirelessly to the Jewish People, uplifting the entirety of Sephardic Jewry. He didn't think what he accomplished was enough – because he knew how much more he could do, and he was prepared to work as hard as was necessary to do it.
The story is told of a man who bought his son an antique car for his college graduation. He told him to go find out how much the car was worth.
The son came back and told his father that he brought the car to a dealership, and they said that it could hardly drive. It was worth at most $500.
"Bring it to a pawn shop," the father instructed.
The boy came back and reported that the guy at the pawn shop said it might be worth as much as $1000.
The father then told his son to bring the car to a classic car club.
The owners of the club were so excited by the car. They offered the young man $100,000 for it.
"This is the lesson I want you to learn," the father said. "Some people will see how much value you have, other people won't. Always know just how valuable you are."
Our problem is that we don't know our value. We see ourselves as $52 people, and so this is all we give. We need to understand that we have so much more to give, so much more to contribute, and so much more to achieve.
We were not brought to this world to be just ok. We were brought here to be everything we are capable of being.
Reprinted from the Parashat Vayelech-Yom Kippur 5786 email of Rabbi David Bibi’s Shabbat Shalom from Cyberspace.
