The story is told of a poor man who came to a village and entered an inn that was unfamiliar to him. The poor man asked the owner of the inn, “I heard that on this street there is place to eat and drink. Where is the place, please?”
“You’ve come to the right place,” the owner of the inn told him. You can get whatever you want, but first you must work, and afterward you’ll receive.” He made the poor man work for several hours, and then he showed him the building across the street: “There you’ll get everything!”
The poor man went inside and saw tables set and people sitting and enjoying themselves. Everything was served generously and graciously. He ate, enjoying every second. At the end he asked the others who were sitting at the table, “What work did you do in exchange for the food?”
“This is a hachnasas orchim belonging to a warmhearted, generous Jew who gives everything for free,” they answered him. “Unfortunately, you went into the home of the swindler across the street, an evil man and a liar, who made you work without paying you even a penny. Had you come here to begin with, you would not have had to work at all!”
This is the relationship between work and parnassah: Yes, one needs to do hishtadlus, but it is our obligation to be careful not to fall into the trap of that swindler, the yetzer hara, who forces a person to work without stopping, as though his parnassah is dependent on this. And yet we receive our sustenance as a free gift from the all-merciful Creator, Who prepares sustenance for all His creations, for His kindness never ends.
However, since the tikkun for Adam Harishon’s sin was, “by the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread,” mankind is instructed by the great Producer, the Creator of the world, to work at something through which sustenance will come. There are people who write or create all sorts of things or objects independently. There are those who deal in business – buying here and selling there; there are hired workers who do their jobs and receive salaries from their bosses.
This is where the real challenge of bitachon begins. When a person does something, he is liable to think that his wisdom stood by him and his diligence is what brought him his salary. He is liable to view his work as the source of bounty, while in truth it is only a means and a decree. On the other hand, a person can think the opposite – that since he does such simple work, his salary is small, and that because of the work he does, he brings in less, or because his business sense misled him, he lost so much.
All these thoughts are mistaken. Poverty is not a result of one’s job, nor is wealth a result of one’s job; rather, both come from the Owner of all wealth (Kiddushin 82). Nevertheless, all types of people are commanded to make an effort to seek parnassah, with bitachon in Hashem that their sustenance is in His Hands and that he is the person’s Guarantor and pays him via the circumstances that He wants (Shaar Habitachon, beginning of ch. 4).
What poignant words these are! How the heart is warmed by hearing the promise that Hashem is the Guarantor!
When a person asks his friend for a large loan, the friend will demand that a third party serve as an arev, a guarantor, that the loan will indeed be returned to him. And here, when we make proper hishtadlus, we have an Arev that parnassah will be coming to us: The Borei Olam Himself is the Guarantor that we will have all our needs; we will do whatever we can do and we do not have to worry at all. If we have done what we have to do – excellent. Then we can be completely calm.
However, it is not assured that doing a certain type of work will bring us parnassah, and it may be that the great Sustainer will chose some other means through which we are to profit. But if we have done our part and paid up our “tax” of hishtadlus, then Hashem will do His part. The truth is that we were commanded to prepare a “vessel,” but we were not told what size that vessel needs to be. There may be someone who prepared a very large vessel; he works for hours upon hours, and this very large vessel gets filled up with pennies. On the other hand, there can be someone who prepares a small vessel and receives in it a check worth tens of thousands.
The main thing is that the vessel should be whole and in accordance with the Shulchan Aruch; that there should be seder to his day, with three tefillos with a minyan, calmly and with yishuv hadaas, learning Torah in quality and quantity, and time for the family and chinuch of the children. It should not be the type of vessel that has many “holes” – all kinds of shortcuts, because then the shefa from on High will come to the vessel, but it will drain out through the holes.
May it be His will that in the merit of strengthening our bitachon we be zocheh to great shefa, brachos and hatzlachos, with physical and emotional health and much simchah; amen.
