Episode 182 - October 7th: A Catalyst for Change

Shabbat isn’t the finish line - it’s the pit stop.

If you don’t carry its lessons into Monday, the reset disappears fast.
Save this for the next time life feels like a rat race.

Comment “pit stop” if you need this reminder too.
The hard road is not always the wrong road.

Sometimes the struggle is the sign that something meaningful is being built.

And honestly?

We judge the outcome too fast, without seeing the full picture.

What feels unfair today can make sense years later.
Maybe the real test is trusting the process - even when it’s bumpy.

What’s been your hardest lesson lately?

#shabbat  #jewishwisdom  #faithinaction  #mindsetshift  

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

It might be difficult, it might be challenging, and that's life. That means that the more challenging it is, like October 7th, the biggest tragedy that ever befall the Jewish nation since the Holocaust is actually going to turn out to be something that we can look back at and say, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be where we are today. We would have been in this perpetual hamster wheel, this rat race, this cycle of life, dealing with rockets flying in and ridiculous responses, Jews dying and lackluster responses. That's what we've been dealing with for decades. That's what we continue to deal with. And Hashem said, no, not anymore. We need a catalyst. Unfortunately, it needed to be October 7th, but I guarantee you the coming decades will be unprecedented in terms of success and safety in Israel.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

The Trust Factor is a ticket to a bad life. The Trust Factor shows you how to get through the night.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Trust Factor Podcast. Shavuatov. I hope you had a meaningful Shabbat. I hope you had a restful Shabbat and you had the chance to recharge your batteries. Because you'll remember last week we said that the rest of the week depends on Shabbat. That's the fueling station. That's where you stop. It's the pit stop. You know, when you're running around that race in the Indy 500 and you're doing lap after lap, that's life, right? And then when do you get the break when you pull into the pit stop? That pit stop is milliseconds. This is not. Shabbat is your time to pull into the pit stop, take a breath, relax, regroup, refocus, connect back to your creator. Remind yourself what your purpose is. Remind yourself that it's not the rat race. It's really what we do is we get into that rat race running around like a hamster on a wheel. Then we take a break for a few seconds and we remind ourselves, but just as quickly as we've reminded ourselves, we forget. And what do we do? We're right back at it. Why? Because Monday comes around and you're back in the office and you're back at work, and all the pressures and all the distractions come at you. And it's very hard to manage them. Even though you just came out of this beautiful day called Shabbat, this holy day where you're learning and you're elevating yourself and you're learning about real purpose and real meaning and the things that you should really be doing. If you're not getting that, it's a whole other conversation. And you need to find yourself a synagogue right away and you need to plug into that system because that's your lifeline. But even if you're getting that, what do you do with that information? How do you make it last? I said last week, inspiration is nothing without action. Shabbat is meaningless if you don't take the lessons out of Shabbat and move them into the rest of the week. You've missed out on an unbelievable opportunity. So the trick, the key to success is learn on Shabbat, grow on Shabbat, recharge your batteries, and then take all of that good stuff and employ it every other day of the week. If you figure out how to do that, you're gonna be on the top of your game. Everybody has to be on that race. Everybody needs to be out there earning and producing and doing all of these things because we're in a world of action. This world is called Olam Haasyah. There are different worlds, different levels of different worlds. This world is called Olamha Asiyah, the world of action. So in this world, we have to act, we have to do. We can't sit on our couches, couch potatoes, and just pray to God and hope that He's going to do something to be able to give us all the things that we want and that we need. You have to get up, is attachato khalakim. You have to earn by the sweat of your brow. How much? It's a different story. And with what perspective, it's a different question. That all depends on you. The fact that you have to earn a living, that goes without saying. How you earn a living, the outlook and the perspective that you have and how you feel about it, and how much you need to work and how hard you need to work, that all depends on you and your relationship with your creator. And you can figure all that out on Shabbat, but you have to implement it the rest of the week. We're going to get into a conversation over here about why it is that even though we know that God runs the world sometimes, it's still hard for us to be okay with the decisions that he makes. It's a big one, guys. It's huge because we can't talk to him. He won't respond to us in words that we can understand. We can look for signs, not necessarily something that's recommended, but you could see how your actions are playing out. You could see where the road opens up ahead of you, where there's troubles and tribulations. But even then, how do you interpret those things? It's good to have a rabbi. But we can't interpret all these things exactingly. We could have a general idea that if the road is open ahead of us, you might interpret that to mean I've chosen right. I've made a decision to go to exlocation. That road is wide open for me. That means I've chosen correctly. Not necessarily the case. Who's pulling the strings? Is it your evil inclination that's opening the road for you, parting the waves, because he knows that that's going to be probably the worst decision you've ever made, and that that decision is going to hinder your growth? Or is it Hashem that says, here's the wide open road? Well, generally speaking, we know then when it's Hashem, it's not a wide open road. How do we know that? Because we've learned, and we just said a couple weeks ago, that Hashem is testing us. He's causing us pain. He's causing us tribulations. When it comes to Hashem, it's a roller coaster. So wait a second. If the road ahead is so easy and everything is just happening for me with minimal effort, maybe I should stop and reconsider. Is this the right path? Because that's not how Hashem works. There needs to be challenges in the way. And the better the outcome, the more the challenges. You've heard the saying, no pain, no gain. Where does that come from? All of these euphemisms, all of these little quips, they come from somewhere. They're rooted in reality to a certain extent. But many of these are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. So when it's a bumpy road, when it's the challenges that you were hoping you wouldn't get, that, my friend, oftentimes is a good sign. That means God is putting stumbling blocks in your way because the prize is going to be great. The more work you put in, the fumsara gra, according to the effort, is the reward. So if God knows that at the end of that path that you've chosen for yourself, there is a tremendous reward. It's not going to come easy. You're going to have to scrape and battle to get there. But when you get there, it will be sweet and you will enjoy the fruits of your labor. You will enjoy your just desserts. That's how it works. So if the road is open, don't interpret it to mean that's a good choice. Oftentimes it's the other way around. It's too easy. This life is not a picnic. It needs to come with some challenges because also what ends up happening is when you get to where you're going and it's so easy, you have no appreciation for it. Easy come, easy go. There's another one of those things. Where did they come from? They're real. They come from a real place of experience that's tried, tested, and true. Easy come, easy go. I didn't work hard for it. I pulled the arm on a slot machine in a casino, and in minutes I made tens of thousands of dollars. That money is likely to disappear very, very quickly. You're not going to appreciate because you didn't put in a real effort. The harder you work, the sweeter your paycheck is. So now we understand a little bit of insight to why it is that we shouldn't judge Hashem. Why is it so hard for me, God? Why? I just want to do A, B, and C. I'm just trying to follow your commandments, I'm just trying to do good for my family. I'm just trying to be to come out on top. Why are you making it difficult for me? It must be that, God forbid, he's sadistic, that he loves playing with me, that he loves messing with my head, that he loves making life difficult for me. What kind of a God is that? And people lose their minds because of this. This is an age-old conundrum, my friends. It goes back a very, very long time since the beginning of humanity. In recent days, we see it with things like October the 7th or the Holocaust, where people say, why, God, why? We don't understand. Why do all these difficult things have to happen? You don't know that, God willing, the next 50 or 100 years in Israel are going to be the best years ever. Why? Because of October the 7th. That should have never happened in the first place. The fact that it happened and what caused it to happen, I don't know. I'm not him. But what I do know with absolute certainty, because I have a relationship with my creator, is that it was all for our benefit. And you're not going to see it today, but you're going to see it play out in the coming decades on how Israel just cleaned up such a huge amount of terror in the region. And with the help of the U.S., God willing, it's going to clean up Iran, also the superpower of terror in the world. Do you know what that's going to mean? Peace and quiet in the state of Israel, opportunity, growth. People are going to be flocking there. And in a few years from now, you might be able to look back with eyes and trace it back to October the 2nd. But likely you're not going to because you're going to get distracted with life. So I'm here to tell you that nothing is bad, nothing is done to hurt us. It might be difficult, it might be challenging, and that's life. That means that the more challenging it is, like October 7th, the biggest tragedy that ever befall the Jewish nation since the Holocaust, is actually going to turn out to be something that we can look back at and say, if that hadn't happened, we wouldn't be where we are today. We would have been in this perpetual hamster wheel, this rat race, this cycle of life, dealing with rockets flying in and ridiculous responses, Jews dying and lackluster responses. That's what we've been dealing with for decades. That's what we continue to deal with. And Hashem said, no, not anymore. We need a catalyst. Unfortunately, it needed to be October 7th. But I guarantee you, the coming decades will be unprecedented in terms of success and safety in Israel. Let's get into it. One who blames his suffering on bad luck, on the forces of nature, on someone else, or on his own apparent lack of ability is making a tremendous mistake. Imagine a son, we go back to this analogy. We're the child, we don't know much at all relative to Hoshem. We know nothing. It's like a one-year-old to a 35 or 40-year-old parent. That child knows nothing. Imagine this son who misbehaves and subsequently receives a punishment from his father. The mischievous son, what does he do? He blames his misfortune on his younger brother. It's your fault. Or the younger sister, it's her fault. It's everybody else's fault. He picks a fight with the siblings. Now, what's going on with the father? He's doubly perturbed. Why? He's got a misbehaving son causing problems, and he's not willing to take ownership of his actions. Not only has the mischievous son failed to improve his behavior, but now he's starting a fight with his little brother, who had nothing to do with his punishment. That's us. We run around trying to find scapegoats for our own actions. Do you know who's really good at that? Everybody. And do you know who's often the scapegoat? That's us, the Jewish nation, the tiny little nation where if you take every single book of the religions that follow Judaism, the original, if you look at Christianity, if you look at Islam, if you look at the other religions that came, their basis, in many cases, if not all, is the Torah. They call it the Old Testament. And theirs is the New Testament. The Quran references it many times. Page after page, you find the references back to the Torah. And what does that originating document say? That God chose this tiny little minuscule nation to be his representatives, to be able to step up and show the world how to have a relationship with your creator. That's our job. They didn't like that. And as a result of that, now we have this thing called sibling rivalry. They have problems. And what do they do when they have problems? We all have everybody blames somebody. And oftentimes we are their target. Let's blame the Jews. Why? Because God chose them and he didn't choose us. They don't understand that whole principle. A lot of people are running around like every other subject on planet Earth, ignorant. What does it mean that God chose the Jewish nation? If you understood that, if you just investigated for a few minutes, you would understand that there is a massive challenge that comes with that. Yes, there is great reward, just like we said, according to the challenge is the reward. But it is a massive challenge. That's why Jews often push away people who want to convert to Judaism. Why? Because we tell them it's difficult. It's so much easier for you to just be a good non-Jew, be a great Christian, be a great Muslim, be a great Hindu or Sikh, be good at who you are. Contribute well to this world. You don't have to be a Jew to do that. So we try and do our best to push them away. The rest of the world has seven Noah Hide laws that they need to keep. Keep those seven laws, and you've got your next world. You've got everything laid out for you. It's not that difficult. The Jewish nation has 613. 613 verses seven. What do you think is more difficult? Now, according to our challenges of reward, which means yes, we stand to earn a lot, but that's only if we're successful. What happens if we fail? Which oftentimes we do. What happens if we don't do our job? Then the same thing applies, but on the opposite side, the punishment is that much worse. They don't understand that when they when the Torah says that God chose us as his chosen nation, he basically put on us a tremendous amount of pressure to be able to leave this world spiritually, to be able to show the world how to operate and a corrupt environment when we have an evil inclination. So now think about it. We have an inclination that arguably is much greater than the evil inclinations of the rest of the world. And we have to operate in this world with that evil inclination and overcome it so that we can demonstrate to the rest of the nations how to be a good person and how to have a relationship with your creator. It is a monumentous task. It is huge, and we are likely to fail it. Oftentimes we do. So we have to deal with the raw end of that, the punishment, the consequences of our failures. They don't see that. They just read the words that say that you're the chosen nation. So it is a responsibility that most people would shirk. They wouldn't even want it. But we have it. We don't have a choice. They instead interpret those words to mean that they're lacking and we're winning. And that's not necessarily the case, especially if we're not doing. I would much rather trade spaces with a righteous Gentile than a corrupt Jew. Do you understand? They don't get that principle. That's the son who wants to blame everybody else for their problems. It's not me, it's them, it's his fault, it's her fault. It's everybody else's fault in the world except for mine. Rather than tracing our tribulations to the creator and our own misdeeds, we look at the third party and we pin blame on them and we vent out our frustrations on them. It's the Jews. When they're making money, they're making too much money. When they're poor and destitute, they're vermin and we need to get rid of them. Instead of accepting the fact that I did wrong and asking for forgiveness, the only real solution to our problem, we fall into the traps of anger, frustration, and despair. Even worse, we fail to realize that the creator is righteous. This is a big one. The feeling that heaven's judgments are askew can be called spoiled justice. One who feels that the creator's judgments are unfair develops a warped sense of justice, which impairs honest evaluation and soul searching. Now we're talking about somebody who knows that there's a God, who agrees, who learns, who prays, who does all the right things. But at the end of the day, when things don't go their way, they're so unwilling to accept it that they now blame him. Never mind the brother and the sister. It's your fault, God. You're the one who's not running this world properly. You're the one who's putting stumbling blocks in my way. You're the one making it difficult for me. Why? Why does it need to be difficult? That's us. And you know what? It traces back to the very beginning of creation. Do you know who said that? Adam. Do you know when? When Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and bad and realized, had the awakening that now if she doesn't give her husband to eat, she's going to die and he's going to remain alive, that she's in this on her own. So she went and gave her husband to eat. And when he ate, they were all punished. And what was the first thing that Adam said when God said, Why did you eat from the tree that I told you not to? He said, It's your fault, God. Do you believe that? He blamed the creator. It's in black and white. Go back and read it. Why? Because you gave me that woman. You gave me that woman and she cheated me. She conned me. So because I ate, because she cheated me, it comes back to you. He blamed everybody but himself. And for that, we pay the price today. We're still doing it. The whole world is doing it. Stop. That's not the right way to move forward. Own your mistakes. Accept that you are faulty. Accept and know with certainty that God is righteous. What does righteous mean? Righteous means he works for you, that it is all outside of him. He only wants to serve justice. That is righteousness. Righteousness and justice go hand in hand. There always has to be mercy and justice, but that's besides the point. A righteous individual is one who is always looking to do justice, to come out having done the right thing. That's God. That's his entire basis of who he is. So for us to imagine, even for a second, that he's not righteous because we don't like the outcome, you're basically telling God again, you're not doing a good job. I can do a better job than you, God. Step aside and let me show you how to run this world. That's what you're saying. It sounds ridiculous. We can barely manage our own lives. We can barely manage our own children and our own houses and businesses. You think you're going to manage somebody else's? Never mind 8 billion people on planet Earth and the seasons and the galaxies and the stars and the moon and the sun. You think you have even the slightest inkling of what's involved in that? And yet we have questions on God and the way he runs his world. Why? Because we can't accept the fact that the outcome is not as we wanted. Stop and recognize we know nothing. We are the one-year-old and God is the adult. We are an insect underneath a rock. When you peel back that rock and the insect sees light, that's the equivalent of us going to the next world. Our entire existence is underneath a rock, a one foot by one foot rock. That's our planet. We think that's the world, right? And what is God? Just as a comparison, he is the eagle soaring at 10,000 feet and can see what's behind, what's forward, everything around you, and far beyond that. We have no clue. We can only see what's in front of our noses. When you understand that, you resign to the fact that God runs this world and thank God He runs the world. Because I wouldn't want that job, not even for a second. Be okay. Be great. And the greater you are with his choices, the greater your life is going to be. Have an amazing week, my friends. We'll chat again on Tuesday. 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 to the first time.