Wall Street Holiday Party | Rabbi Naftali Horowitz

When I first entered Wall Street, only a couple of months into my job, I was faced with my first and greatest Nisayon. It's what we call the Wall Street Holiday Party. A holiday party on Wall Street is exactly what you would expect. Wall-to-wall immorality coupled with alcohol. I knew that I could not go, but on the other hand, as a new employee at the firm, I knew that I needed to be a team player and I would be expected to be there. So what was I to do? I sat in my office and I contemplated. And then Hashem put the following idea into my mind. I picked up the phone and I called a local Kiruv organization who I often speak for, and I asked them if I can possibly speak next Tuesday night for their group. And they were thrilled and they said: Absolutely. So I scheduled a Kiruv class at the exact same time as the holiday party. The day before the holiday party, I called up the CEO and I said: John, I'm so sorry. I made a huge mistake. I booked a lecture for a large group of Jewish boys and girls, and they're expecting me to come inspire them on the beauties of Judaism. On the flip side, we have this very important holiday party, which I know I should and expected to attend. John, what should I do? John whispered into my ear and said: Go to the children. And there ended my Nisayon called Wall Street Holiday Parties. Someone recently called me and said that they had gone on a job interview. They're unemployed. They desperately needed this job, and they were offered the job. They called me because they had a שאלה. What they found was that the person that they would be working for would put them into a daily Nisayon of Shemiras Einayim. And they wanted to know if it was negative Hishtadlus for them to turn down this job simply for that reason. I said: אשריך that you’re even asking this question, but I can assure you, I'm no Rebbe, I’m no Tzaddik, that if you turn down this job, you will get a job that will be far better. It didn't take two weeks for a much better job offer to come around. We have to realize that our Bitachon is often going to be challenged when Hishtadlus conflicts with upholding the mandates of the Torah. Earning money today sometimes incurs or entails situations where we must compromise or we think we must compromise our Yiddishkeit. There are so many examples of this, we don't need to go into them. But when we embrace Bitachon and we realize that Hakadosh Baruch Hu does not need Hishtadlus to entail a compromise of our standards, does not entail a compromise of our Shemiras Einayim, we are truly embracing Bitachon, and through that, we achieve tremendous Bracha.