Episode 121 - What Changes When You Stop Blaming Villains

We start with a surprisingly practical line from Pirkei Avot: treat your student’s honour like your own, treat your friend with the reverence you’d give a teacher, and treat your teacher with the reverence of Heaven. From mentorship to parenting to leadership, we talk about what separates a “good teacher” from a forgettable one: caring about the person beneath the surface, the neshama, not just delivering information.

Then we unpack reverence without the confusion. Real reverence is not intimidation, it’s humility and the discipline to listen when someone wiser is speaking. We also clarify “fear of Heaven” with a simple analogy: the fear isn’t that God will stop loving you, it’s that you’ll choose to play with fire and get burned. When you add awe of creation, from the human body to the universe itself, reverence becomes natural rather than forced.

The conversation shifts into emunah and money stress, including the instinct to hunt for villains after a financial hit: blaming ourselves, scammers, banks, bad luck, or bad omens. We challenge the entire framework, including the idea of the evil eye, and argue it only has power when you hand it power. The practical move is the one most people skip: turn to Hashem, pray, and let trust reshape your next decision so you don’t spiral into resentment, shortcuts, or exhaustion.

Subscribe for more conversations on trust, Jewish ethics, spiritual growth, and real-life resilience, and if this helped you, share it and leave a review so more people can find it. What line from the episode are you taking into your week?

Transcript

Teaser And Welcome

SPEAKER_01 0:11

The trust factor is a ticket to a battle. The trust factor shows you how to get through the vibe.

unknown 0:21

Trust factor.

Friday Banter Into Shabbat

A Pirkei Avot Guiding Line

The Mark Of A Great Teacher

Reverence That Makes You Listen

Fear Of Sin Versus Fear Of God

Awe Of Creation Builds Reverence

Emunah When Money Gets Hit

Why Evil Eye Beliefs Collapse

Prayer Over Panic And Closing

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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. It went quick, I know. Thank God it's Friday. T G I F. I remember over 20 years ago, that restaurant, T G I F, and I always thought to myself, a non-Jew obviously came up with that phrase. There's nothing really Jewish about it. But then I thought, no, when I started keeping Shabbat, I thought, this must be a Jewish guy that came up with this phrase. Thank God it's Friday, or Baruch Hashem, it's Shabbat. I should open up a kosher version of T G I F and call it B-H-I-S. Baruch Hashem, it's Shabbat. Bottom line, my friends, the weekend is here. Thank God. I'm sure you got through a productive week. Let's finish it off with a little bit more divine content, the kind of content that helps us get through our weeks and make them so much more meaningful. We're into Pirkeavot because we're counting the Omer. Let's get into it. Here's one that applies to everybody. Most of them do, but this one specifically. Rabbi Elizar ben Shammua, the son of Shemuah, said, Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own. The honor of your colleague as the reverence of your teacher, and the reverence of your teacher as the reverence of heaven. Let's back that up a little bit. He said, Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own. What is he referring to? There is a very big difference between a good teacher and a not so good teacher. And that difference comes in how we consider the honor of our students. How much do we really care about the people beneath the skin? The skin, the clothing, the external is just a covering for our souls. It just covers us. That's all. Our real essence is our nishama. It's our soul. How much do you really care about the individual nishama, the soul of the individual you're teaching? If you're concerned about that soul, you're automatically, it doesn't matter how qualified you are in being able to get over information. Just the virtue of you loving that individual's soul elevates you to a whole other level of quality of teacher. Your students will remember you forever, not because of the content that you taught them, but because your souls were connected. That's why it says you need to let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own. Think about this. How would I want my teacher to engage with me? I've given you story after story about Rabbi Zacharia Wallerstein. His soul should be elevated. He was a rabbi for young boys for 30, 40 years. And the whole reason he got into it was because he wanted to protect these students and their honor, because he felt firsthand what it was like to have a Rebbe, somebody that you look up to, somebody who you love, not love you back the same way. And so he got into becoming a rabbi, even though he was a terrible student. He was definitely not qualified to be able to teach on a high level. And that didn't stop him because he wanted to get into it, to be able to hold the honor of his students on the highest level. And that's why everybody knew him and he was a big loss to the world. The honor of your colleague, in other words, your friends, it's using colleague here, but in Hebrew it says chavercha, which is your friend. The honor of your friend needs to be like the reverence that you have for a teacher. Reverence is also translated as awe and sometimes as fear. But again, it's not a trembling fear where you think your teacher is going to destroy you. It's a fear that you understand or a reverence that you understand that your teacher is much more educated than you are, much more experienced than you are, and has so much more to give to you, and that you can drink from their well, you can take so much of this wisdom from them that they're willing to share. And because of that, you have a certain amount of reverence for them, that you will stay quiet when your teacher speaks. At least you should have been taught that. I don't know so much about this generation. But when somebody who's more educated than you starts to speak, especially when they're coming to teach you something, then we stay quiet and we open our ears and we listen. That's how we learn. We don't learn by wanting to always interject with our limited knowledge, especially when we're speaking to somebody who we know with certainty is so much more educated on the subject than we are. So we have to have reverence for that individual. And then it says, the reverence for your teacher needs to be as the reverence of heaven. So there you go, my friends. You know, oftentimes people think that the reverence is the fear that you need to be shaking in your boots. There is an element when it comes to Hashem, when it comes to the creator of the world, that yeah, you need to be fearful, not of him, but of doing the sins, doing the averas, going against what he told you to do. Not because you're going against him, but because you're not doing the things that you need to be doing for yourself. He gave you the mitzvahs, the commandments. He told you what to do and what not to do. The fear needs to be that you're going to do things that you shouldn't do, because he told you not to do them. And what he told you not to do was in order to protect you. So now I'm about to play with fire. I know I shouldn't play with fire. My father told me I shouldn't play with fire because I'm going to get burned. He's shown me so many different examples of this. I'm about to embark on this, even though I know I shouldn't, I should approach it trembling with fear. Not that I'm trembling with fear that my father's going to get mad at me and write me off or shut me down or punish me for the rest of my life because I know my father loves me. I know that even if he gets mad, it'll be a temporary madness. It'll be something just to be able to drive the point home that I've done something wrong and he's upset about it, but he'll get over it and he'll continue to love me and we'll continue to have a relationship. What I'm terrified of, what I'm doing while I'm trembling, is approaching the sin, approaching exactly what he told me not to do, because I know it's bad for me, but something inside of me is driving me to do it. Something inside of me, a desire, that evil inclination, is saying, do it, just try it, see, test. Maybe he was wrong. And you're approaching it in a way that now you're very terrified, you're trembling. Uh-oh, is this really going to be bad for me? Was my father really right? Should I be doing this? That's the fear. The reverence is knowing who created the world, knowing that the galaxies, the universe, the planets, the stars, the moon, the sun, the trees, the human body, the brain, the eyes, the ability to see, hear, all your senses, your cells, trillions of cells in a human body, each one dedicated to doing its job. And if anyone decided it wanted to change its job even for a second, you'd be dead, to have a heart attack or a stroke. Recognizing the awesomeness of his creation should bring you to reverence just as you approach your teacher in a way that you recognize that you should have reverence for them because they are holding on a much higher level than you are, that they have so much more wisdom and experience than you do, that reverence, multiply it by a billion for your creator. Because nobody on planet Earth can even do a fraction of what he does and what he continues to do for us. All of creation was for us. When you stop and just contemplate that just for a few minutes, the awesomeness of a human body, the miraculous nature of human bodies, what went into creating the galaxies that continue to go through the motions every second of every day. They don't stop. And if they did, God forbid, stop their rotations. Do you know what would happen? Complete and utter catastrophe. Everything would fall apart. But he continues to turn the globe. The earth has not stopped turning because he's turning it for our benefit. When you stop and recognize things like that, your reverence for heaven comes automatically. You don't even need to work on it. That does it for Pika Vot for today, my friends. We're back into our book. We're going to finish off today and go into Shabbat strong. Here's how it goes, and this will resonate with you, trust me. Those who lack Amuna attribute their financial difficulties to a long list of villains. We know this very well. Either they blame themselves or they blame others. Look at me, what a fool I was. I just did this the other day. You guys, if you're paying attention, you know. I just said to you the other day that I blame myself in a sense for the scam that happened to me, that I lost thousands of dollars because some scammer came after me and succeeded. But in the same breath, I'm busy telling you about how Hashem is moving my hands, pushing the buttons for me. That's what it felt like at least. So I know. And I'm the one teaching, I'm the one reading, I'm the one growing, and I know this to be true. And yet, despite that, I finished telling you not long ago a couple of times that I feel like I'm a fool. I'm blaming myself to an extent. And what he's saying over here is exactly that. I'm either busy blaming myself, or I'm blaming the scammers that called me to try and take away my money, or I'm trying I'm blaming the bank because the bank doesn't have enough security protocols in place. I can go on and on and on. We all do this. When something bad happens to us, especially around financial losses, we're always busy trying to find the villain. We're always busy trying to find what happens so that I can stop it from happening again, or so that I can explain it away and not feel so bad about it. You don't have to feel bad about it. Why? Because if you recognize where it comes from, if you recognize that Hashem did this and he loves you and he runs the world and it's all for your benefit, you immediately stop and go, whoa, wow, Hashem, that was unbelievable. I didn't expect that. I don't know why you did it, but I know it's for the best. So thank you. Even though it hurts, I worked hard for that money, and it's not easy to come across that kind of money, but I understand that you give me all of my money and you take it when it's necessary, and that's exactly what you did. So thank you. Thank you for not waiting for me. Because had you waited for me and my fraileness and my faultiness and my evil inclination, that money may have never come out of my account. And so, because you care enough for me, you made sure that while I'm in this world in this go-around, that you're going to help me to remove that money from my account. You look at it like that, everything changes. They curse their bad fortune or their bad luck. How many people walk around cursing their bad luck all day long? Things just don't work out for them. Or they go on witch hunts after bad omens. I know so many people like this. Evil eye. Or are you ready for this? Other nonsense. This is Ravshalom Arush of the Brezhnev movement. He is telling you that omens and evil eyes are nonsense. I've told you this before in different ways. What I told you was that evil eye only works when you believe in it. If you don't believe in it, if you attribute no power to evil eye, then you disarm it entirely. It's not capable of hurting you. The whole concept that somebody has the ability to harm you with the way that they look at you or their possessions or the way that they think about you is ridiculous. You're saying in the same statement that an individual who's looking at me from a distance, who doesn't like me, has the power to undo God's decrees because he's jealous, because he's upset. It's ridiculous. You think he's more powerful than Hashem? He has somehow the ability to veto Hashem's decisions? It's ridiculous. But so many people walk around believing that, and he tells you over here, it's absolute nonsense. Stop believing in it. Don't give it the power that you're giving it. We've said, the direction that a person wants to go, God will take you. Which means if you want to attribute power to any other individual to take away the things that you have, then he will allow it. That's the only time evil eye makes sense. When you allow it, then Hashem says, if you're allowing it, then I have to allow it. If you don't allow it, then I won't allow it either. So get it out of your head. Nobody is going to impact your life negatively because they don't like you. It's not going to happen. Sometimes they lament that God doesn't love them. We've heard this. Where are you, Hashem? You've forsaken me. How come you didn't say thank you, Hashem, when the child came into the world? How come you didn't say thank you, Hashem, when you got the clean bill of help from the doctor? How come you didn't say thank you to Hashem when you managed to open up your business and get your first customer? The same way that you said, where are you, Hashem, when God forbid you get the diagnosis or you lose the money? Then you start thinking, he doesn't love me. What kind of a God can love me if he's going to take away all my money or if he's going to give me these terrible sicknesses? And as a result of that, they harbor resentment towards Hashem. They think of a hundred different ploys to make money or to otherwise obtain what they want, including illegal means such as outright stealing. And I'll add to that, they start to think, like I said the other day, if somebody's going to steal from me, then suddenly that gives me the license to steal from somebody else, from them or anybody else. It perpetuates a vicious cycle of negativity. They do everything instead of what they should be doing, which is what? Turning to the creator and praying. Very simple. I get it, Hashem. It comes from you. I'm turning to you now. Humanity means nothing to me. Who the scammers are means nothing to me. How much the bank is involved means nothing to me. None of these things mean anything to me. The only thing that means anything to me is you, Hashem. So I know it all comes from you. Let me have a conversation and try and understand this so that I can settle myself. They rack their brains deciding whether to beg, borrow, or steal. They work overtime at the expense of their health and their family. Without a muna, a person amplifies the curse of living by the sweat of your brow. They lack inner peace both on this world and in the next. What's the one I want to hang on there for a second? They amplify the curse of living by the sweat of your own brow. What's the insinuation? What's the lesson? Look between the trees. Understand the message. If you have the ability to amplify the curse of living by the sweat of your brow, then the implication is that you also have the ability to minimize that curse. You also have the ability to get to the point where you barely have to live by the sweat of your brow. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that intriguing? Don't you want to learn more about that? If you want to be able to live on Easy Street, to live an easy life where you're not worried about where your next meal is coming from, you have the ability to do that. And I'm going to let you in on a little secret. We've been doing that. The question is, have you been paying attention? Have an amazing day, have an amazing show. But we'll speak on Sunday. 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.