How to Emotionally Recover from a Financial Mistake: A Faith-Based Perspective

Mrs. Sigalit shared that she made a business mistake five years ago. Since then, not a day has gone by without her crying and regretting the error that landed her in a financial hole of half a million shekels. “How do you cope?” she asked, her voice choked with tears.

First, it’s important to remember that crying over the past is like receiving a double punishment. Bringing the past into the present means suffering today for something that happened yesterday which is a mindset that not only doesn’t help us move forward emotionally, mentally, financially, etc., but actually floods us with pain and sorrow, preventing us from starting fresh with renewed strength. As believing Jews, we know that everything is from Heaven, and we have no permission to despair.

During the austerity period, not every child was lucky enough to drink a glass of milk in the morning. Often, children would come to school hungry, struggling to concentrate. One morning, a rabbi arrived carrying a large jug of milk on his shoulder. The children, seeing the jug, ran after him in excitement, thrilled by the thought that soon they would get a cup of milk to relieve their hunger. But instead of pouring the children cups of milk, the rabbi walked straight to the drain in the yard, and poured the entire jug of milk into it.

The children stood stunned, watching silently, unable to comprehend what had just happened. After a few seconds of tense silence, the rabbi turned to the students and asked, “Well?... Why aren’t you crying?”

“What would it help if we cried?” one student replied. “It’s milk, but it’s already spilled.”

“You heard that?” the rabbi raised his voice. “We don’t cry over spilled milk.”

One of those students tells the story today, decades later. He’s been through many challenges in life, but he always remembered the rabbi’s lesson with the milk jug: don’t cry over spilled milk.

Returning to Sigalit’s failed deal, I explained: we are not prophets or fortune-tellers. We act based on the information we have in the moment. You did what you thought was right at the time, and that’s okay. What happened, happened, because that’s what God wanted. The Master of the World is the one running the puppet show. He decides who invests, and where. As it says (Deuteronomy 8:18), “It is He who gives you the strength to succeed,” which Onkelos translates as: “It is He who gives you the idea where to buy and what to do.”

Sometimes, God takes money instead of physical illness, sometimes it’s in place of mental suffering, and sometimes it’s an atonement for the soul. A believing Jew knows: if I succeeded, it’s because God willed it, and if I failed, it’s because God willed it. There is no direct link between skill and success. We begin every effort with prayer, and deliverance comes from God alone.

Be happy, Sigalit, that you lost money and not your health. And remember that everything that happens to you is ultimately for your good.