Every person is fit to be righteous like Moshe Rabbeinu (Rambam Hilchos Teshuva 5:2)
It happened on President’s Day, right before my father had his cardiac arrest. I remember visiting him at home, as he hadn’t been feeling well, and noticing how he was visibly weaker.
I had just come out of his room and was standing in the kitchen, speaking with my mother. We were chatting, talking about something going on in the community. Maybe it was about what the local rabbi was doing for the community. It was something positive, something nice. Ten feet away, my father was lying in his room.
Suddenly, I heard him call out: “Joey!” I walked in, and he looked at me seriously. “Joey, come here.”
Now, my father was not a pep-talk kind of man, and he wasn’t the type to give dramatic locker-room speeches. He was always calm, even keeled and steady. But this moment was different. It was the only time I can ever remember him speaking like this.
He looked me in the eye and said, “Joey, you listen to me. Don’t you ever think that anybody is better than you. I don’t care how much fanfare they have and I don’t care how much noise they make. Don’t you ever believe that anybody is better than you.”
I was shaken. Not because he was loud or angry, but because this was so unlike him. It came from such a deep place within. I walked back into the kitchen and looked at my mother. “What did Daddy want?” I just stood there for a second, trying to process it. “You had to hear what he just told me.”
You know why my father said that? Because that’s how he lived his entire life. My father never thought anyone was better than him. And it wasn’t ego; it was confidence. He lived his life with quiet, unshakable confidence. And because of that, he was truly humble. He didn’t need recognition and it didn’t matter if anyone knew what he did. He didn’t live for the noise.
When you live like that, when you’re grounded in who you are, in who your Father in Heaven is, you don’t sway with the wind. You’re not pulled this way and that by every headline, every rumor, every emotion.
Most of us blow like the wind. Something good happens in the news, and we get excited and then something sad happens, and we spiral. We hear about someone else’s success, and we grow jealous. We hear a problem, and we sink into fear. We become flip-flopping, reactionary people.
But when you’re anchored—when you’re secure in your mission, in your values, and in your Creator—you live. Really live. Every day has purpose, and every result, every setback, every win, every step, every attempt is infused with meaning, strength and confidence.
So take a moment and ask yourself: do I think about what I’m doing? Am I confident that it’s the right thing?
If you are, that’s all you need. You don’t need validation, you don’t need headlines, you don’t even need to know what’s happening in the rest of the world.
That’s how my father lived, and that’s what he gave me in that moment.
I’ll never forget it.
