If there is one deeply sobering and powerful idea that has remained etched in my mind since I first heard it in my youth, it is from the Steipler Gaon, found in his compiled letters Kreina D’Igrata, which sheds light on a fundamental truth about Rosh Hashanah.
We are all familiar with the concept that parnassah, livelihood, is determined on Rosh Hashanah (Beitzah 16a). But the Steipler writes that it’s not only financial income that is decided on this day. Every detail of a person’s life—including the pain, hardship, and struggle they will endure—is also decreed on Rosh Hashanah and sealed on Yom Kippur.
How much pain? How much challenge? It’s all measured and determined by Heaven.
The Steipler explains that there is a fixed “amount” of struggle each person is destined to experience in the coming year. You can think of it, he writes, metaphorically, as something measurable, as if in grams, kilos, or any other unit. And here’s the key: you will experience that exact amount of struggle no matter what.
But there is a choice.
You can choose how that struggle manifests. If you take that hardship and invest it in something meaningful, such as bringing a child into the world, building a Torah home, taking on a spiritual challenge, or enduring the difficulties of a mitzvah, you transform that pain into blessing.
Yes, having a child is hard, and yes, raising a family, giving tzedakah, or shouldering communal responsibility can be painful and draining. But that hardship, says the Steipler, is the very same hardship you were destined to endure this year. At least now, it’s in the service of something eternal. And if not?
Then the struggle still comes, but in other, far less meaningful ways. The washer breaks, the car gets totaled, the business fails, health issues emerge. One way or another, the struggle arrives because it was decreed and sealed.
And so, the Steipler concludes, the wise person accepts that pain is part of the Divine decree, but chooses to direct it toward something purposeful. If we’re going to suffer, let it be for the sake of growth, of family, of Torah, of mitzvos. Let the struggle elevate us.
This is a transformative perspective to carry into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
We stand before Hashem, asking for life, for blessing, for peace. But we must also ask: how will I carry the struggles that are destined for me? Will I use them to build something holy, or will I spend them on broken machines and missed opportunities?
The choice is ours.
