Episode 119 - When Saving A Life Feels Like An Interruption

A phone rings and the voice sounds official, calm, and helpful. You follow the steps, you stay cautious, and you still end up losing thousands. Now what? We go past the fraud details and into the deeper question: what does emunah look like when you feel embarrassed, angry, and powerless, and the loss happened through your own hands? We share a fresh personal story and the inner work of repeating a hard truth until it becomes real: everything comes from Hashem, and what He signs off on is ultimately for our good. 

Before we get there, we open with Pirkei Avot and a line that challenges anyone who loves learning Torah. Studying for personal growth is sweet, meaningful, and holy, but it is not the finish line. We explore the difference between learning in order to teach and learning in order to do, and why a life of Torah must become a life of mitzvot, responsibility, and action. A powerful story about a bone marrow match forces the issue: what happens when saving a life interrupts your learning schedule, and why can that interruption still be the highest expression of what you’ve learned? 

Along the way we break down practical Jewish ethics for modern life: when to step in, when to step back, and how to protect your learning by living it. If you’ve been struggling with trust, financial stress, or the gap between what you believe and how you react under pressure, this conversation will give you language, framework, and perspective you can carry into your next hard moment. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review with the line that hit you hardest.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:11

The trust factor is a ticket to a bad eye. The trust factor shows you how to get through the night.

unknown 0:21

Trust factor.

Welcome And The Need For Clarity

SPEAKER_00 0:22

The world is louder and more chaotic than ever. That's why clarity and truth have never been more important. Welcome to the Trust Factor Podcast.

Learning Torah To Teach Or Do

A Bone Marrow Match Dilemma

When Help Is Yours To Give

Emunah Through Financial Loss

A Real Scam And A Hard Lesson

Trusting Hashem In Every Part

Final Thoughts And Share The Show

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. It looks like today is going to be a day of stories, personal first-hand experiences, just based on the preliminary review that I'm doing over here. With regards to Pirkeavod, I want to jump into it because there's going to be stories, which means it's going to take a long time. It says that Rabbi Ishmael, the son of Rabbi Yossi, said, one who studies Torah in order to teach is given the means to study and teach. What does that mean? Somebody who says to himself, I want to be able to learn Torah for the sake of learning Torah, for the sake of my own personal growth and wisdom in Hashem's Torah, is there something wrong with that? Seemingly there wouldn't be, because there are a lot of other things that I can be doing that don't include studying Torah, which wouldn't be good. So just the fact that I'm desiring to sit and study and grow in Hashem's Torah is an amazing thing. What could be the downside? The downside is that we weren't given the Torah to sit and just learn from it. As much as it's sweet, and as much as it's delicious, and as much as it's the key to unlocking all the secrets in the world, it doesn't end there. That's just the beginning. Our goal should be to learn in order to do. This is a world of action. I've said that many times. So to sit and learn, although you might call that an action, that's not what it was designed for. So it says over here, there are two real approaches to this. Number one is it's very good. To give yourself a pat on the back that you're going to sit and learn a shamstora, it's very nice. There's nothing wrong with that. But what it's saying over here, another way to interpret this is if it's only for your own knowledge, then there's a problem. Why? Because if that's the case, if all you're doing is learning for yourself, then it says you will be given the ability to study and to teach. That's it. You're not going to be given any other abilities outside of the ability to study and to teach. However, one who studies Torah in order to practice, in other words, in order to do the mitzvah, is given the means not only to study and to teach, but also to observe and to practice. And when it says observe, it means lish more, which is really to protect, to protect your learning, to put boundaries and fences, like we said the rabbis did with regards to our mitzvahs, because we understand how important they are. You will miss out on the ability to observe and to practice if you're only learning for yourself. Let me give you an example through a story that happened to me. A long time ago, I was learning in a kolal, which is basically a learning center for young adults or sometimes old adults, people who are getting started in life mostly, just got married, spending the first few years of their married life in learning and growing themselves spiritually. And there was night say there, which means guys come around at the end of the day after work and they learn for a couple hours. And that was learning with an individual, wonderful, wonderful individual. And he shared with me a story, and it goes like this. One day, a long time ago, he found himself in yeshiva learning in Jerusalem. Wonderful. Every religious boy's dream to be in yeshiva in Israel, studying Torah 24 hours, seven days a week, if they could, that's what they would do. But most spend the vast majority of their day studying and learning and growing with their friends. This individual had a friend in his yeshiva who fell ill, deathly ill, and needed a bone marrow transplant. And for that, everybody in the yeshiva got swabbed, and that swab was sent in to see if they could find a match for this student of theirs, this fellow student, to give him a bone marrow transplant. And nobody came up as a match in the yeshiva, unfortunately. Unbeknownst to this friend of mine, his sample now gets stored in a database for future potential opportunities. And not long after that, while he was thick in the study of Kamara in his yeshiva, he gets a phone call. Guess what? You're a match. Not for your friend, but for somebody else. There is a single mother in Jerusalem who is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant to save her life. Now listen to what he says to me. He says that he wasn't sure what to do, how to get out of it. And I said, What? What do you mean? You want to get out of saving a Jewish single mother's life because he didn't want to get away from his Torah learning? That bothered me immensely. It didn't connect. I could not make that connection because of what we're learning over here. How is it possible that you have a religious Jew who's sitting and learning God's Torah and is so upset now that he just got a message asking him to come in and take potentially two, three days, however long it's going to be, to now go into the hospital and prep and give over his bone marrow and then go through whatever recovery is required and then get back into the yeshiva and restart his learning. Who knows? Maybe it could be a week away from his yeshiva. Doesn't mean he can't learn, take a book with you, and go learn in the hospital. I'm arguing with him. It's really bothering me. I said, it doesn't make sense. And he's continuing to uphold his position. He's looking at me like I'm crazy, that I don't understand why it is that he wants to remain in the yeshiva and not go save a single Jewish mother's life in a hospital just by giving over his bone marrow. He was ready to do it for his friend. Why not for her? And that bothered me. So I asked, we couldn't come to an understanding. I ended up calling my rabbi. My rabbi explained it to me the following way. He said, it is a punishment for him. The fact that he got a phone call to take him away from his learning was a punishment. The message sent to him by Hishem was: I need you to separate from your learning, which is the ultimate level of holiness in this world. The most enjoyable thing that a religious Jew can do is sit and grow for themselves. And so in his desire, in his good desire, his well-intended desire of growing in the Shemstorah, Shem said, wait, stop. Time to pull you away and get you to actually do the actions. Because if you're not going to, then you're going to miss out on the whole back half of Judaism, which is implementing what it is that you've learned. And so while he has an obligation to go and save this life, it's a demotion for him. The example is that you're driving down the street to go and learn, and somebody has a flat tire in front of you, and three or four cars pull over to help this little old lady change her tire. Now, you're one of them because you're a good person and you want to do the mitzvah, the act, the good deed. So you pull over and you see that there are other perfectly capable individuals ready and willing at the line to come and help this lady. Are you going to push your way in to help her? Are you going to get back in your car and say, she's got this? She's fine. I can continue on. The right answer would be that, to move on and not miss out on the tremendous reward that awaits for you and your learning. But if there's nobody there, if she's on her own and you're the only one that can help her, then you have an obligation to help her, even if it costs your learning. The idea is that although we know and we love and we want to learn this beautiful Torah for ourselves, to grow and even to teach others, the fact that pulling ourselves away from it, to be able to do the actions, is a demotion for us because it takes us away from this. It is nonetheless that important that Hashem will send you these opportunities. So know that the right approach to a balanced life in Judaism is not just to learn and to teach, but to keep and to grow all of your learnings through action. Okay, my friends, that wraps it up for Pirkeavot. We're getting back into the book, and there is another example that I wasn't going to share, but I don't think I have a choice because there's no such thing as coincidence. It says, when experiencing a financial loss, whether in the form of theft, a lost possession, or a breakdown, one should revert to three principles of Imunna as follows. Everything comes from God, as does this particular loss. Not only does everything come from him, but this is exactly what he wants and therefore what I should want. This particular loss is for the best, as everything else is that God does. That is so much easier said than done. It says this loss is a message from heaven to stimulate self-evaluation and soul searching for something that needs to be corrected, because there are no tribulations without transgressions. If you've lost money, if you've gotten yourself into a business deal that went sideways, if you got into an investment, you bought a stock that somebody told you and you lost a fortune, there is no lack of ways for you to lose money. If you get into that situation and you've lost money and you recognize that it's all from Hashem and it is perfect. Not only perfect, it's great. Can you imagine this? It's amazing that you could turn up to the heavens and say, thank you for sending me that scammer, then you're on top of the world. You've won in this game called Life. Let me tell you what happened to me two weeks ago. I don't know why. It seems like the scammers have been targeting me lately. I told you about a story not long ago. There's another one. Maybe it's because I'm talking to you about this stuff that Hashem is sending me over some more tests and trials so that I could, it could be a little bit more real to me. I don't know, but suddenly they're targeting me. It should only be in finances, not in the health. I'm good with that. Nobody should ever want to be tested. I don't ever want to be tested because I often say, I'll lose, I'll fail. If Hashem tests me, I'll fail. I'm not that strong. And I'm man enough to admit it. I don't want to be tested. I will do my best to pass the test, but I'm not that strong, Hashem. And I often say that in my prayers. Please, don't test me. You know, certain areas of my, I'll fail. I won't be able to get back up. Finances, health, leave it out. Finances, anything else is fair game, but health, leave out. And I think that's the case for most people. Last two weeks ago, I get a phone call from my bank's fraud department. I want to make this a very short story because it can go on forever. The bank's fraud department calls me and asks me if I've initiated a transfer to an individual for a couple thousand dollars out of Quebec. I said, no, it wasn't me. They said, great news. We've intercepted the transaction. You haven't lost anything, but we need to secure your account. How are we going to secure your account? I'm going to do it on my end, and you'll see the results on your end. So he puts me on halt and goes away and does what he needs to do and comes back a few minutes later and says, you should see that your ability to send transfers electronically have been limited to zero. Take a look on your app and just confirm that for me. I look and it's not zero. In fact, it's exactly like it was before. He says, I can't do it on my end. Let me put you over to somebody who can in the technical service department. Puts me on to a technician. That technician starts to run me through all of the back end of how this thing works. And he clearly knows what he's talking about. And he says to me, I'm going to do it on my end. And he goes through and tries it on his end, comes back and says to me, Now you should see your ability has been limited to zero. And I look and I say, No, it's exactly as it was before. He says, Okay, we're having a problem on our end, obviously. You're gonna have to do it on your end. And a long story short, he gets me to send myself, you hear that? To send myself an e-transfer. Not to send it to some obscure individual, some random email, to my own email. Send yourself an e-transfer. He walks me through the motions. He gets me to move funds around. He knows exactly what he's talking about and exactly what to tap on, reminding you I'm in the middle of a very busy workday, and suddenly I'm pulled away to deal with this. There's a lot going on, so there's a lot of confusion in the air. I'm following his instructions because he clearly knows what he's talking about, and I'm clearly talking to the bank. Even the music on hold when they transfer you is the same music and the same speech as that you hear at the bank. Anyway, I ended up doing what he asked me to do. And somehow, without knowing who I sent it to and what the password was and all the other things that they asked me, and I wouldn't give them because I did suspect a little bit at one point, they still managed to intercept an e-transfer to me. And it cost me many thousands of dollars. This was just a couple weeks ago. And it was extremely frustrating, extremely upsetting that two things happened. Number one, somebody stole. And number two, it happened through me that I didn't pick up on it, that somehow it went right past me. And I'm not a guy that that happens too often. I'm the guy who warns people never to give any information to somebody. And that's why there were a couple of instances where they tried to confirm my identity and I wouldn't give them the information. But they still managed, without any of that, to go ahead and intercept this transfer. I don't know how they did it even till today, but at the end of the day, I've been working on myself since that day to constantly remind myself. And every time I do, it makes me feel so much better that every single dollar was required to leave my account. It's not that it was a bad thing. It's not that there was a negative associated with it. It had to leave. It was the best thing for me. It saved me from so much worse. These are the things I tell you guys on a regular basis. It's happening by me because I have to have the eyes to see it. Even though I do, this is just cementing it for me that I know where this is coming from. I know who sent this my way. I know who signed off on it. And the only reason my father would sign off on this money leaving my account was because it was the best thing for me. It saved me from so much worse or potentially having to pay so much more. So at the end of the day, am I okay with it? It's always gonna rub you wrong. It's always gonna make you feel like you're a fool because it happened at my hands, which is even more of an indication that if Hashem is gonna take you, an individual who is very well put together, and those fraud when they see it, and is the guy who advises everybody around them on all these different things, and suddenly he takes you and turns you into a robot to the point where you know in the back of your mind something's not right, but still your hands going through the motion, your fingers are pressing the buttons, you're not able to stop yourself. You're just going through it. You know with absolute certainty that there is no way that this transaction could not have happened. Sham was running the whole thing from sending me the individual to managing my reaction and my response to this. It humbles me a lot more to realize that I am at the mercy of the world. But even better than that, I'm at his mercy, which means he's like, he's moving around pieces on a chessboard. He's the one setting up the strategy for the next three, four, five moves. He sees it. I don't, we don't see it. And as long as he's running it, as long as he's the one making the call, telling me what to do, or even moving my hand, I'm perfectly okay with it, my friends. And you know where that applies? In all of life, in every single aspect of life, not just finances, but health and relationships and school and work and everything else that you deal with. Hashem is intimately involved. Why? Because he loves you. Have an amazing day, my friends. We'll chat tomorrow. Thank you for spending time with us on the Trust Factor Podcast. If you've heard something today that moved you, save this episode and share it with someone who might need to hear it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss upcoming conversations that challenge, empower, and uplift. And if you're on social media, connect with us. Leave your thoughts, drop a quote that resonated with you. Hashtag the TrustFactor Podcast. Until next time, keep growing in your trust and keep living with purpose. I'm Jesse Revivo, and this has been the Trust Factor Podcast. Thanks for listening.