QUESTION
What do you think of buying lottery tickets?
ANSWER
Nothing wrong. Nothing wrong! Only you should be mispallel to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That’s called hishtadlus – trying to make money. What difference is it if you make money on the stock market or lottery tickets?
Only you have to know there’s a limit to everything. So if you spend, let’s say, five dollars a week on it, that’s enough. And put in a lot of tefillah and maybe something will happen. But you can’t waste too much money because it’s common sense.
And common sense – I’ll tell you a little story. The Alter of Slabodka was once talking to his talmidim. He said to them, “What’s the first mitzvah of the Torah? What is the first mitzvah of the Torah?”
So each one was trying to tell him – they were all lamdanim.
“No,” he said. “The first mitzvah—he said it in Lithuanian—is nebūk durnius.” It means ‘don’t be a fool.’
The first mitzvah of the Torah is don’t be a fool. That’s the very first mitzvah. You have to have seichel before everything else. So therefore, it’s common sense you can’t spend too much money on gambling, but a little bit, no harm. But on condition that you’ll be mishtadel in tefilla to have hatzlacha.
October 1991
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