A wealthy man once brought a guest into his beautiful home. He walked him through every room and showed him everything he owned.
He showed him the dining room, the silver, the furniture, the sefarim shrank, the pictures on the wall, and the beautiful view from the window.
The guest was very impressed.
Then the wealthy man turned to him and said, “So, what do you think of me?”
The guest answered, “I know what you own. But I still do not know who you are.”
A person can have many things. He can have money, a house, clothing, talent, success, and kavod. But none of those things tell us who he really is.
What defines a person is not what he has. What defines a person is what he lives for.
At the end of Parshas Matos, the Torah tells us about two people who conquered cities. One was Yair ben Menashe, and one was Novach.
By Yair, the Torah says that he called the cities, “Chavos Yair,” the villages of Yair.
By Novach, the Torah says, he called the city Novach, after his own name.
Rashi brings from the Midrash that the name Novach did not last. The city was not known by that name for future generations. But the name Chavos Yair did last, as we find later in Sefer Shoftim.
Rav Schwab explains that there was a difference between Yair and Novach.
Novach looked at the city as his identity. It was not just a city he had built. It became his name. It became who he was.
Yair was different. He also had cities. He also named them after himself. But he called them Chavos Yair, the villages of Yair. In other words, they belonged to him, but they were not him.
That is a big difference.
A person can make the mistake of thinking that what he owns is what defines him. His house, his clothing, his money, his success, his popularity, his image. He begins to feel that these things are not just things he has. They are who he is.
But that is not the truth. What a person has is not who he is. What a person lives for is who he is.
Dovid HaMelech says, “Va’ani tefillah.” I am tefillah. He does not say only that he davens. He says that tefillah became part of him. It was not just something he did. It was who he became.
The same is true with learning, middos, chesed, and avodas Hashem.
A person who learns again and again becomes a person of Torah. A person who davens with feeling again and again becomes a person connected to Hashem. A person who works on his middos again and again becomes a refined person. What we do again and again slowly becomes part of us.
Novach tried to define himself by what he had, and that name did not last. Yair understood that possessions are not the person. They are only tools. Therefore, his name remained.
Each person has to ask himself this question. What really defines me?
Is it what I own, what people think of me, and what I can show others?
Or is it my Torah, my tefillah, my middos, and my connection to Hashem?
That is what lasts.
