Episode 120 - What If Trust Is The Real Test Of Loss

One small choice can echo longer than you think, especially when the world is loud and chaotic. We open with a sharp teaching from Pirkei Avot: one mitzvah creates an advocate, and one transgression creates an accuser. We unpack what that means in human terms and why Jewish ethics treats actions and speech as forces that keep working long after the moment passes. If you’ve ever wondered whether “it was just a comment” or “it was only once,” this conversation challenges that reflex.

From there, we get very specific about Lashon Hara, slanderous gossip, and why it may be the hardest habit to undo. We share a story involving the Baal Shem Tov that flips the script: the harm you create through speech can come back with a life of its own. Then we connect it to a classic midrash on the giving of the Torah and Naaseh Venishma, “we will do and we will listen,” as a model for trust, obedience, and clarity. In a digital world of reposts, screenshots, and instant outrage, we talk about why deleting something rarely repairs what was released.

We close with emunah and financial hardship through The Garden of Emuna, including a business story about betrayal, resentment, and the hard work of forgiveness. The point isn’t to pretend losses don’t hurt. It’s to respond with integrity, avoid dishonest payback, and build the kind of trust in the Creator that steadies you for life.

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Transcript

Why Clarity Matters Now

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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. Good morning, everybody. We're closing out the week. It's Thursday on the Trust Factor Podcast. I'm glad you could join us. We're getting right back into the ethics of the fathers. Here's how it goes. Rabbi Eliezer Ben Yaqov, the son of Yaakov, said, He who fulfills even a single mitzvah gains himself a single advocate. What's he referring to? What does it mean by an advocate? And what does it mean by a single mitzvah? So I just do a single mitzvah, and there's power enough behind that to gain myself an advocate. Where do I need an advocate? I don't need an advocate in this world. I can advocate for myself. The advocate that it's referring to is in the next world. Let me explain. There's an idea that, well, when you do a mitzvah, when you do a good deed, you create an angel, you bring goodness into this world. We've heard that before, right? That goodness that you're bringing into this world in factuality is an angel. You're bringing, you're creating through your action, your good deed, an angel, an angel that will come to defend you in the next world. All of the angels that you create in this world are waiting for you in the next. And when you have to come and give your accounting after 120 years to explain why you did what you did and why you're deserving of good and not of bad, these are the angels that come up in your defense. These are the angels that come as defense attorneys on your behalf. They're called praklit. And then it continues and it says, Vihaover alavrachan, one who commits even one single transgression, gains himself a single accuser. And that accuser is called a kategor. So you have a prakleit and you have a kategor. One is a defense attorney, and the other is the prosecutor. So you've sinned. You've brought negativity, you've brought wickedness and evil into this world in the form of an evil angel. That's the way it works. So after 120 years, depending on how many of each you have, that will determine the outcome. One will advocate for your good, and the other will advocate for your destruction. That's the simple way of understanding this. And it says repentance and good deeds are like a shield against retribution. You want to avoid having any of these categors, any of these prosecuting angels, then you have to repent. The implication is that when you repent, you do away with the prosecuting angels. Gives a story. An opponent of the Baal Shemtov, who was the father of Chasidut, once sat in his sukah, in the Sukkah of the Baal Shemtov, while he wasn't there, among friends, and spoke disparagingly of the great sage. The Bal Shemtof was a giant and tore. The next day the Bal Shemtov operated him. How does a person of your caliber speak evil tongue Lashonhara in the in the Sukkah? Not only in the Sukkah, in his Sukkah he sat in his Sukkah and spoke evil tongue about him. Shocked, the man asked him, Who told you? An angel, answered the Bal Shemtof. The detractor laughed. Since when do angels speak Lashonhara, speak slanderous gossip? Some do, answered the holy man. Every time a person does a good deed, he gives birth to a good angel. And every time he sins, he creates an evil angel. The angel you created by speaking slanderously against me is the one who told me. Evil angels, like their creators, are not afraid of sinning. Somebody who speaks evil tongue is simply not afraid of sinning. And the evil that you bring into the world through this angel, this prosecuting angel, is equally as brazen, and they have power in this world to bring it down. Because they fear no sin as well. Let me tell you a little story about evil tongue and gossip. It says that when Hashem gave the Torah, he went around and he asked all of the nations who wanted it. He went to every single nation in the world and said, I have this wonderful Torah. This is a midrash, by the way. I have this wonderful thing called a Torah, he said, and I want to give it to a nation. Who wants it? And he went from nation to nation, and each nation asked the same question. They said, What's in it? Before we take this, I want to know what's in it for me. Tell me what's this Torah all about? What instructions are in it that I need to follow? And what did Hashem tell them? It really depended on which nation he was speaking to. So if he was speaking to a nation that lived by the sword and died by the sword, he would say, Thou shalt not kill. And they said, No, thank you. It's not for us. We kill for survival. We live by the sword. No thanks. And he moved on to another nation. And when he asked that nation if they wanted, and they said, What's in it? If that nation was a nation that was built on thievery and deceit and corruption, then he would say, Thou shalt not steal. And they would say, No, not for us. Thank you very much. Move on. And so Hashem did, going from nation to nation to nation, asking them if they wanted the Torah. And every time they asked what's in it, he would give them the example that was the most difficult for them, the mitzvah that was most challenging for that nation to observe. And ultimately, they walked away from it until he came to the Jewish nation. And he asked us, Do you want this Torah? And we all know the famous words that we replied. The words were not what's in it. It was Naase Venishma. We will do and we will listen. The obvious question is, why is it reversed? Because first you listen, you get the instructions, and then you do. It doesn't make sense to just do and then figure out if you did it right. But that's what we said. And the angels in the heavens were shocked because they didn't know how we understood that phrase. That was a phrase that they live by. How is it that mortals understood that we first need to do and then listen? Meaning to say that when Hashem decrees we do his action. And then if you have questions, you can ask later on. The questions and the explanations are secondary. Why? Because we know who gave us the Torah. We know he's our Father and we know he loves us, and we know that it's our instruction manual for life, and it is entirely for our benefit. So I'm not going to ask why I'm doing it. I'm going to do it first. And then afterwards, if you want to tell me why I did it and what the benefit is, I'll take it. No problem. But right now, it's not a prerequisite. I don't need to know why I'm doing Hashem's Torah, why I'm following it, in order to do it. So that's what we said. But the famous question is ask what would Hashem have said to the Jewish nation if we would have said, what's in it? If we would have asked that fateful question that cost all these other nations their access to this Torah, if the Jewish nation would have asked, tell us what's in the Torah, God, which example would he have chosen that would have been our downfall, would have been the most difficult for us to observe? And the answer is slanderous gossip. Evil tongue, Lashon Hara, it is our nation's Achilles' heel. It is what brings us down all the time. This idea of sitting around and gossiping and sharing rumors and talking about other people, it is such a terrible, terrible trait. If you only begun to understand how difficult it is to undo what you've done when you speak negatively about somebody, when you put that out into the ether, it becomes impossible to atone for. Especially today, in an age of technology where you can write whatever you want online, click a button, and it goes far and wide. There's no way to pull it back. There's no way to undo it. You can apologize till the cows come home. It doesn't help because the message has been sent and you don't know how far it reached. You think deleting it makes a difference? It doesn't. It's already out there. It's been seen and it's been passed on and shared many times. Very, very difficult, my friends. Never mind the fact that in publications like newspapers, when they make a massive mistake and they claim that somebody is a criminal of the highest order and they put them on the front page, what's the retraction look like when they try and do the right thing? It's a small little caption, the back of the newspaper. We made a mistake. That doesn't exist anymore because I don't remember the last time I saw a newspaper. But the idea being that we have to be very careful because no matter how much you try and reverse the effects of evil tongue, of wicked speech, it's impossible. That does it for Pierre Kevot. Let's spend a few minutes on our book, The Garden of Imuna. We were talking yesterday, I shared with you a story, a real life story that happened to me. It was very trying, very difficult, primarily because it happens through you and you don't realize that it's happening at the time. And later on you think that was the stupidest thing I could have ever done. It just goes to show you that Hashem runs the world, that Hashem determines your next move. Whether or not you like it, he will determine it. That's not all the time. We have free choice, we have the ability to do the right thing. There's no question. But Hashem does things for our benefit. He knew very well what needed to come out of the account. And that amount was removed. And it was a mercy, it was a gift, because really 10 times or more than that was what's actually owed. Now, I have an obligation to do my part, of course. I'm going to try and do my best to be able to recover. But if I don't, I'm working on myself on a daily basis to recognize that that loss was for my benefit. Let's read what it says about that. It says that a 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. I said that yesterday. Everything happens in this world with exacting precision. If something negative, or quote-unquote negative, seemingly negative, happens to you, it's because you've transgressed. We all make mistakes. Nobody is perfect. It could have been in the same week, it could have been in the same month, it could have been in a different lifetime. But you need to cleanse yourself of that sin, of that mistake. You can't walk around carrying that baggage. It's like people who get divorced because they have all kinds of negative attitudes and character traits, and they are in a relationship and they bring in children to the world and create an entire life and then divorce them and they think that the other person is the problem. And what do they do? They take all of their negative character traits with them into their next relationship. And then they ultimately destroy that relationship as well. You have to fix yourself. You have to always consider that you're the problem, even if the other person is faulty, even if the other person has their own set of challenges, which they do. Forget about them. They work on themselves, you work on yourself. So if you figured that out, then you're constantly trying to do the introspection. What did I do wrong? How can I improve? How can I better myself? If that's what you're occupied with, then you stand very little chance of falling into this situation where things are taken away from you and you don't understand why. But again, we're all human. We all err. People with amuna know that the creator is the provider. And that's why when they encounter financial difficulties, they react by putting their amuna to work. They compensate for deficiency by penitence, by repentance, by rectifying the misdeeds that cause the deficiency in the first place. Like I said, you hit a car in a parking lot. It's not enough to say sorry. It's not enough to feel bad. You need to take an action to make it better. They pray and they appeal to Hashem. I can't do this without you. I need your help. I need clarity. Where's that clarity to come from? From you, Hashem. They certainly don't try to attain money in a dishonest fashion. A lot of people might think, if I got taken advantage of, then I'm going to take advantage of somebody else. If it's going to happen to me, then I'm going to make sure that it happens to somebody else. I'm going to take what's not mine because somebody took from me what wasn't theirs. And then you perpetuate this vicious cycle of negativity. It's the exact wrong approach. It's the reason something was taken for you in the first place. The fact that you transgressed somewhere in your life, maybe 10 years ago, 20 years ago. You transgressed. You took something that didn't belong to you. You cheated somebody. And therefore, you had to have that money removed from you. There's no coincidences, my friend. So now you're going to go and you're going to do more of what it was that caused you that hardship in the first place? You're not getting it. You're not getting the message. Only by power of Amuna can a person glide through financial difficulties. With Amuna, he attains the attribute of trust in the Creator and attribute that accompanies him for life. When you can surmount that challenge of finances, which is one of the two largest evil inclinations in the world, when you can get above that and realize that everything is perfect, then you have conquered this thing called life. I'll tell you a friend of mine that I know who's in business, very successful, making lots of money, told me a story not long ago about an individual who he trained, he brought on board after this person grobled and begged that this individual should train him and bring him on as a mentor. And he brought him on and he trained him and he introduced him to his customers and to his network. And suddenly this young guy who's just getting into the business decides that he's going to undermine his trainer, his mentor, the person who taught him the business and stole one of his clients for himself. He did a backroom deal with one of these clients and took a very large commission away from this individual. Can you imagine? The person that you invested your time and your energy in out of the goodness and the kindness of your heart goes and backstabs you. And it bothered him. It sat on his chest, on his heart for so long he couldn't get past it. He harbored really, really negative feelings for this individual. I can't even begin to imagine. Mine was a few thousand dollars for him, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars. Life-changing money. And this individual trained him, and now he was beside himself, couldn't reconcile until he finally met with his rabbi, and his rabbi explained to him the challenge is getting over it. But once you get over it, once you give this guy complete forgiveness, once you moved on because you recognized that there is a God that runs this world, and there is no such thing as coincidence, and that person had to come into your life, and that person had to steal your client, and he saved you from so much worse. Once he did that, once he went back to that individual, called him, and said, I want you to know I forgive you. I want you to know I don't harbor any more ill feelings towards you. I don't, I'm completely okay with you. And he meant it. He was sincere. It came from his heart when he did that. He said, not long after, I don't remember how long, maybe a few months, but not long after, he earned one of his largest commission tickets ever in the business as an individual who's been in that business for a long time and has been very successful. He earned a massive, massive commission ticket. And do you know where he came from? That individual. That individual that stole from him, that ended up getting the phone call saying it's all good, I forgive you, I hold no malice towards you, ended up bringing this individual a deal that was much bigger than the one that he took from him. Guys, there's no coincidences. If you haven't figured it out until now, it's time to figure it out. Everything is perfect and exacting, and it's all for our benefit. Have an amazing day. 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.