Does financial stress mean God has forgotten me?

Rabbi Landau answers no: “The blessing doesn’t come after the pain, it comes inside the pain.” Financial pressure is not a sign that Hashem forgot you.

“That pressure is a diamond press,” he says. “He’s not blocking you from abundance. He’s squeezing abundance out of you.” It is like the invisible pressure on a piece of carbon until it becomes a diamond. “The fire isn’t outside the gift, the fire is the gift.”

The verse says, “Mei’ito lo seitzei hara,” from Hashem no evil comes out. So what looks like a curse, Rabbi Landau explains, “is just the wrapping paper on the brocha.” It only looks like a curse because you haven’t unwrapped it yet.

That is why he does not see two options here, a blessing or a curse, but one truth: “The blessing is right there in the pressure.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Financial pressure is not a sign that Hashem has forgotten you. The blessing is inside the pressure, not after it.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

Has Hashem closed the heavens to me?

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau describes this as the question a Jew asks in a whisper in a hard time. He calls it not doubt but a thirst to understand.

What may be behind it

Pressure is the diamond press: it squeezes out of a person a strength and abundance he did not know he had. The fire is not outside the gift; the fire is the gift.

Deepest human truth

From Hashem no evil comes out. What looks like a curse is wrapping, and the blessing is already there inside it.

More questions from this teaching

• If nothing bad comes from God, why do hard times feel like a curse?