Q&A: Your Book
Your Book
Question
I wanted to ask another question about your book. You brought Maimonides' statement that a gentile who keeps the seven commandments because reason compels him is not a resident alien, but rather one of their wise men, and from there you also infer the same for a Jew. Am I allowed to argue: Maimonides meant a gentile and not a Jew. If he had meant a Jew, he would have written so explicitly, and you cannot infer things that were not written. Or is it in fact possible to infer this, as you indeed did?
Answer
I didn't understand the question. If I inferred it in the book, then apparently I think it can be inferred. It's a simple logical point, and there is no reason at all to distinguish between a Jew and a gentile. If you have a concrete argument against this inference, write it. By the way, if I remember correctly, in the book itself I addressed this and referred to the commentaries that note it.
Discussion on Answer
A person doesn't need to say anything, neither in the morning nor in the evening. He needs to go to work, and he will earn according to his efforts and the circumstances. To the best of my understanding, the Holy One, blessed be He, has no involvement in this matter. I have a very detailed systematic view on this subject; see the second book of the trilogy.
Rabbi, what is your view on livelihood and faith? Up to now, what I was taught is the Baal Shem Tov approach: in the morning a person should say, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" and go out to work. And when he comes home in the evening, he has to believe that even if he had been sitting inside a locked warehouse, the money would have reached him there. Does God allot a person's livelihood from Rosh Hashanah? If I am a cashier in a supermarket or an electrical engineer in high-tech, will I earn the same amount of money that the Holy One, blessed be He, allotted me? Does the Rabbi have a systematic view on this topic that he can suggest to me?