What Is It All For? Money, and the Way We Serve Hashem

“You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing with what it desires.” Opening People tell of one of the richest men in the world, one of the biggest fortunes of our generation. He built up a huge amount of wealth. Yet he kept living in his old house and driving his worn-out car. Every morning he got up early with one question burning inside him: How can I earn more? You stop and wonder: What for? If you don’t enjoy it, if you don’t taste it, if you don’t live from your wealth, then what is this desire really about? The Body and the Soul of a Thing We need to make a distinction. It is simple, and it is also deep. When a person says, “I want money,” what exactly does he want? If the money sat in a storeroom and he never touched it, would he feel satisfied? No. What he truly wants is not printed paper or numbers in a bank account. He wants what the money makes possible: rest, respect, joy, and the chance to give to others. The money is the body. Its purpose is its soul. Someone who holds on to the body alone and throws away the soul is not really rich. He is a rich miser, and he lives like a poor man. Our Sages said the same: “The more possessions, the more worry.” More possessions bring more worry, not more joy. Possessions on their own are not the goal. They are only the way to reach it. The Lesson: The Spiritually Rich Man Now, my brother, let us move from the parable to its lesson, and into our own hearts. There is a rich miser with money. In the same way, and may Hashem forgive us for putting it so sharply, there is a “rich miser” in serving Hashem. This is a person who studies, prays and keeps the commandments. He piles up hours, pages and merits. His life is full of spiritual “possessions.” But ask him quietly, from within: Do you taste it? Do you find delight in your prayer? This morning, when you put on the prayer boxes on your arm and head, did it touch you? Sometimes a person holds on to the “body” of a commandment and leaves its soul to the side. It is not because he is doing wrong. It comes from habit and from how tiring the road can be. He does, but he does not live it. He gathers, but he is not happy with his portion. King Solomon wrote: “Then I looked at all the things I had done… and saw that it was all a fleeting breath, a chasing after the wind.” When we look only at the actions, cut off from their inner purpose, everything seems empty. The commandments themselves are not empty, Heaven forbid. But a “body” without a “soul” is missing something. A Note from Hasidic Teaching Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes in one of his letters that the purpose of serving Hashem is not only the outward action. It is the closeness to Hashem that we feel deep inside the heart. In Likkutei Torah, his collection of Hasidic teachings, he explains that love and awe of Hashem are “the soul of the commandments.” Without them the commandment is still there, but it is missing the most important part. This is the inner heart of the teaching of the holy Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement. We should not be satisfied with keeping the commandments only technically. We should search for the vitality inside every commandment, and uncover it. That is the point where a person truly touches Hashem Himself. Then a commandment is not only “I did it,” but “I was there. I met Him.” Closing Picture one person eating a grand and costly feast who has no sense of taste. Picture another eating a piece of dry bread with joy, tasting all the good in it. Both of their bodies are fed. But which of them is alive? Serving Hashem is not a race to pile things up. It is an invitation to a relationship. To a bond. To taste. As our Sages said: “Make your Torah study fixed.” Fixed, and not a load you carry. Something that holds you, not something you have to lift.