In times of financial anxiety

RABBI SIMON JACOBSON

If you are suffering from today’s financial crisis, here is a piece of counsel from the Torah portion of Noah, the second parashah in the Book of Genesis.

A great flood was about to arrive and Noah is told by G-d: “Build yourself an ark … come into the ark together with your family,” and this ark will protect you from the flood.

Teivah is the Hebrew word used in the Torah for ark. Teivah also means word. Said the Baal Shem Tov, “Build yourself an ark,” by which he meant to enter into protective words of Torah and prayer, which can protect us, for example, in this day and age, from the raging flood-waters of financial anxieties that each of us have.

This advice may seem counterintuitive. When you are suffering financially, it sounds more practical to intensify your efforts to find supplemental income – a new job, new types of investments. When money is lost, it seems that the most logical thing to do is to become more aggressive in your pursuit of money.

But think again. From where do we derive ultimate security? Can a structure rest comfortably on a shifting foundation? Would you feel safe being embraced by transient love? Can a child build confidence with absentee parents? Can we be secure with something that is fundamentally insecure? True security can only come from something that is not temporary; safety and trust is built on that which is solid and permanent.

Everything in this material universe is intrinsically impermanent. We are mortals living in an ever-changing and ever-aging world. Everything physical erodes, ages and dies. Everything that has a beginning has an end. Our looks, our youth, our food, our belongings and, yes, our money, all get depleted.

I have always found it ironic to call those financial vehicles, which are inherently temporal and fraught with risk (as every prospectus legally reminds us), with the name “securities.” With everything material, including money, being so transitory, how can we expect to find security there? Yet we return there again and again. Is it because we have become addicted, or because we don’t know of any other alternatives?

The mere fact that in times of financial anxiety most of us would gravitate back to more aggressive monetary pursuits is the clearest demonstration of how addicted we have become to money, and how we feel that it is the only panacea to relieve our anxiety. However, the rule is that anything that brings you anxiety can never relieve your anxiety. As one shtetl drunk once said, “You drink to drown your tzoros [problems]. Then you find out that tzoros float!” And thus comes the brilliant but simple advice found in parashat Noah: “Build yourself an ark ... come into the ark together with your family.”

When the floodwaters of financial pressures and anxieties are raging and threaten to drown you, build a protective “ark” and enter into it with your family. Insulate yourself with spiritual values and ideas. Take time each day, each week, on weekends – designate any time that works – gather your family together and study some Torah, read a spiritual thought together, pray together.

This is not escapism. This is being pragmatic and empowering. It is acknowledging that when the unpredictable floods are going wild, you have the power to create an oasis – a protective womb – that lifts you and your loved ones to an eternal place, which shelters you from the storm. Not just shelter that avoids danger, but a space that brings permanent comfort, being that it connects you to the immortal, the holy words that surround your life, so that even when you “leave the ark” and return to the material world, you have become somewhat immunized, no longer so vulnerable to the inherent insecurities of everything corporeal.

Build yourself an ark. Enter into it. Feel nurtured. A simple piece of advice; one that can change your life.

Rabbi Simon Jacobson is the author of the best-selling book Toward a Meaningful Life and heads the Meaningful Life Centre (meaningfullife.com), which bridges the secular and the spiritual, through a wide variety of live and online programming. This article was originally published on aish.com and was distributed by the Kaddish Connection Network.

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