The Money Was Gone—But His Trust in Hashem Remained

A remarkable story told by Rabbi Elimelech Biderman:

In one of the Torah schools in Bnei Brak, there was a teacher who lived with deep faith in Hashem and carried out his work with heartfelt devotion. He never left a lesson in the middle—except in very rare and urgent cases.

One time, right before Passover, he apologized to his students during class and quietly stepped out to the teachers' room. A principal who saw him leaving overheard him on the phone, asking someone at home, in a worried voice, whether the old suits in the closet had already been thrown away.

It seemed the answer was yes, because the teacher quickly continued: "Please go down right now and check if the garbage room has already been cleared." He waited anxiously for a minute or two. Then something was said on the other end, and the teacher responded: "So the city workers have already cleared everything..." There was a short silence, then he added a few calm words, ended the call, and returned to class as if nothing had happened.

The principal, puzzled by this strange behavior, took the first opportunity to quietly ask the teacher why he had left the lesson in the middle to check on something so unusual.

The teacher explained: "I'll tell you exactly what happened. In a few months, one of my children is getting married. As you know, wedding expenses are very high, and to help cover the costs, I borrowed a large sum of money from a gemach—a free-loan fund people use in our community when they need help.

I looked for a safe hiding place for the money and decided to tuck it into the pocket of one of my old suits.

This morning, before I left the house, I heard my wife talking about how she planned to throw out all the old suits because they were too worn out to use anymore. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I had completely forgotten about the money hidden in that suit pocket.

But during the lesson, it suddenly came back to me. I remembered what she said, and panic set in. I rushed to call home to check if the suit was still there. When I heard that everything had already been taken out to the garbage and collected by the city workers, I realized the money was gone.

I said, ‘What a shame about the money’—and came back to the classroom to continue teaching.

The principal was shocked. "You just found out you lost such a huge amount of money—and you walked right back into class to keep teaching, as if nothing happened? How is that possible?"

The teacher answered simply: "When I was young, I learned from Rabbi Gedaliah Eisner. He used to tell us again and again: 'If not for times like these, why would a person descend to this world?'

He planted those words so deeply in our hearts that today, when I faced this challenge, I remembered them—and I understood. This is the purpose of life. This is what I’m here for."

Rabbi Biderman concludes: This is how someone with trust in Hashem loses his money. This is how he walks through the tests that Hashem places before him. And if we take this lesson with us and make it part of who we are, then we can turn any test into a moment of greatness—the kind of moment that reveals why we came to this world in the first place.