The money you’ll be making will surely help you and your family breathe easier, but will you yet emerge as the ben Torah you still want to be?

My Dear Friend,

Thank you so much for dropping me a line, but I must tell you that your letter surprised me a bit. I was glad to hear that you found a good job in your new location, a coveted high-tech position with a nice salary, and I’m happy that you and your family will enjoy much more comfortable circumstances now. You certainly deserve that after the difficult period you’ve been through since leaving kollel.

But it was hard to hear that you barely have any time for learning, and that you’re completely caught up in advancing your new career. And I don’t have to tell you that it comes at a cost to your Yiddishkeit. Of course, you didn’t tell me this in so many words — what you actually said was, “Eventually I’ll be getting back to learning every day.” Reading between the lines, I sensed pretty clearly that you’ve been swept up into the atmosphere of your work environment. You say you’ve gotten a friendly reception from the other workers, who are mostly non-Jews, nice people who are trying to help you acclimate. That is encouraging to hear, but at the same time it scares me to think that you are liable to lose your unique status as a ben Torah.

I’m hoping that if any such influence is taking place, it is yet at an early stage, and you will still be able to relate to what I’m saying to you.

True, I haven’t had to face the kind of nisyonos you are dealing with today. I don’t see myself as having any right to preach to you, but I’m just reaching out as a caring friend. You are important to me, and since you chose to write to me, I feel I ought to share an insight that you might not have considered. It’s a basic and vital component of your character as a Jew and a ben Torah. And in fact, it’s the key to understanding the new reality in which you find yourself and how to face it with your Yiddishkeit completely intact.

I’m referring to a sense of mission.

We believe that every person, certainly every Jew, comes to This World to rectify something. You aren’t living just for yourself. HaKadosh Baruch Hu places each person in the precise time, place, and circumstances where he has a task to fulfill.

My friend, I say this with all due caution: Clearly, you have been placed where you are, with a job in a non-Jewish environment, because you have a mission to fulfill there. You may think that HaKadosh Baruch Hu simply sent you to the right place to get the good parnassah He prepared for you, but if that is what you think, you’re mistaken. You were sent there primarily to carry out a mission, and incidentally to receive a nice parnassah as well. Please don’t reverse the order.

We are all here to carry on the legacy of Avraham Avinu, the first of the Patriarchs. When he recognized the Creator of the world, he realized that a great responsibility now rested on his shoulders: to be mekadeish Sheim Shamayim, to bring the people of the world to know and love their Maker. He devoted his life to that task, and he bequeathed it to all his descendants for all generations to come. Every Jew in the world, under whatever conditions he finds himself, has his own unique part to play in carrying out the mission of Avraham Avinu.

Sometimes we may forget this, and sometimes we don’t clearly discern our task, but the world around us watches us, the Jews, with great interest. There is no hiding from it. You can’t say to yourself, “What do you mean, a mission? What kind of mission could I have in a high-tech company? I’m just trying to make a decent living for my wife and children, that’s all.” No — as it says in Pirkei Avos, we are not required to complete the task, but neither are we free to shirk it. We are Hashem’s commando force within human society, and we must remember that.

Now, in your position within this non-Jewish high-tech company, understanding and accepting that you have a mission there should actually make your life easier. If you let that sense of mission fill you completely, you will be like a lamp illuminating the darkness all around you. At every moment, you will remember that you are a ben Torah and that a higher standard of behavior is required of you. Everyone around you will sense something special about you, expressed in everything you do — the way you speak to people, your seriousness about your work, the care with which you treat the company’s property, your readiness to help others, all stemming from your constant awareness that you’ve been assigned a very holy task, namely, “that the Name of Heaven should become beloved through you.” You are a soldier in HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s army!

Your sense of mission will affect every aspect of your behavior, and the people around you will see what a ben Torah is and respect you for personifying your values. But the main thing is that your awareness of your special purpose in This World will make it so much easier to withstand the nisyonos brought by your new circumstances, provided, of course, that you activate everything you acquired from your years of learning in yeshivah and kollel.

Look at the shluchim of Chabad, scattered around the world, and see what a sense of mission can do. What is it that enables them to work under conditions that are often very difficult? It’s their sense of mission as emissaries of the Lubavitcher Rebbe ztz”l, and this lightens any burden that falls on their shoulders. That’s the power of shlichus — and you, too, are a shaliach, sent by Hashem to the place where you now find yourself. That knowledge, if it fills every fiber of your being, will lighten the weight of the task assigned to you, to remain a ben Torah who finds time to learn and is careful about every mitzvah, even while working in a non-Jewish environment.

Think about it, ponder it. See yourself as a direct descendant of Avraham Avinu, seeking to fulfill his mission in the world. Remember the final words of Hashem’s brachah to Avraham: “and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.” All the families of the earth, non-Jews included.

And know that if HaKadosh Baruch Hu has placed you there, that means He believes in your ability to fulfill your assigned task. For Chazal teach that HaKadosh Baruch Hu does not test anyone with a trial that he is unable to withstand. It only depends on the choices you make.

Please don’t let Him down.

Hoping to hear good news from you,

Moshe

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 750)