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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Trust that your perceived weakness, here not being able to read or write, can become the very source of your livelihood (parnassah), as Rabbi Fischel Schachter's story illustrates. The story presents this as a lesson in bitachon (trust in Hashem), where a limitation leads to an unexpected job that is then kept on through an unusual arrangement.
Key Points
- A man in Morocco who could not read or write hesitated to move to Israel because he feared he would have no livelihood, while his friends were going and expected to find work.
- The Chacham told him that not knowing how to read or write would itself be the source of his parnassah, comparing him to small creatures Hashem sustains without skills, even though this seemed illogical.
- After being sent to wait three hours in a room full of magazines and newspapers, the man was hired for a job shredding documents, because the employers wanted someone who would not read them.
- The employers kept him on even when he offered to retire on pension, paying him both a pension and his salary so he would not learn to read.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives no step-by-step instructions, checklist, or method. The only actionable advice is the Chacham's directive to "Go to Israel" despite the fear of having no livelihood, and the reassurance that not reading or writing would not prevent earning a living.
- The employers' test was to leave him for three hours in a room of reading material to see whether he would glance at any of it; he did not, which confirmed he was the right candidate.
- His job was shredding documents, chosen specifically because the organization did not want anyone reading them before destruction; the transcript attributes the employer to the Shin Bet, though it introduces this only as "or whatever."
- When he wanted to retire, the employer preferred to keep him and gave both pension and salary, which the story frames as the source of his parnassah.
Bottom Line
A limitation that feels like a disadvantage can, in this account, become the reason one is hired and valued, so the story encourages trust in Hashem's provision over fear of one's own shortcomings.
