What did you do with what you were given?

A spiritual accounting usually begins with the question: what did I do wrong? But there is another question, sometimes more difficult: what did I do with what I was given?

A person receives years, talent, money, relationships, knowledge, influence, a home, the ability to listen, the ability to help. These are not only assets. They are possibilities.

Haazinu asks: “Is this how you repay the Lord?... Is He not your Father who created you?” (Deuteronomy 32:6). The gift itself creates responsibility.

A person can pass through a year without a dramatic sin and still leave a great deal of goodness unborn - not because he had nothing to give, but because the gift stayed with him.

Which ability did you receive? Who could benefit from it? What can become this year not only a private blessing, but a blessing that passes through you to someone else?

The greatest blessing is not only to receive much. It is to turn what we received into something another person can receive from us.

What one gift you received could become a blessing for someone else this year?

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They tell of a father who invested for years in his son so that he could learn a profession and build his life. He paid the tuition, helped with rent, supported him during periods when he had no income, and when the son finished his studies he even helped him open a small office. The years passed, the son became very successful, and the small office grew into a large business.

One day the father and son sat together. The son proudly described the success, the employees, the deals, and the plans for the future. The father listened with joy. He did not ask for money back and did not remind his son how much he had invested in him. At the end of the conversation he asked only one question: “Tell me, now that you have so much ability, what are you doing with it?”

The son did not understand. “What do you mean? I work, advance, and earn.”

The father said: “I am not asking how successful you became. I am asking what your success enables you to give to others. You received education, opportunity, connections, money, and influence. What have you done with everything you received?”

There are questions that do not accuse a person over what he did. They are harder, because they ask what he could have done and did not do.

In the Song of Haazinu, Moses asks Israel: “Is this how you repay the Lord, foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father who acquired you? He made you and established you” (Deuteronomy 32:6).

Moses does not begin here with a list of sins. He places two things side by side: on one side, “He is your Father, He acquired you, He made you and established you.” On the other side: “Is this how you repay the Lord?”

In other words, to understand the seriousness of your behavior, do not look only at what you did. First look at what you received.

That opens an entirely different kind of self-examination.

Usually, when we prepare for Yom Kippur, we ask: where did I sin? Where did I speak wrongly? Where did I hurt someone? What did I fail to guard properly? These are necessary questions. But there is another question that may be less comfortable: what did the Holy One, blessed be He, entrust to me this year, and what did I do with it?

A person can pass an entire year without committing a dramatic transgression and still waste enormous gifts.

The Holy One, blessed be He, gave him intelligence. What did he do with it? He gave him the ability to speak. How much of that speech was used to strengthen people? He gave him money. The question is not only whether the money was earned honestly, but how much good he did through it. He gave him influence. Did people become better because he is in their lives? He gave him children. Did he only provide for them, or did he build a relationship with them? He gave him time. The question is not only whether he avoided sin during that time, but what he built with it.

That is a much more demanding question than “What did I do wrong?”

Because it is possible to be free of many wrongs and still live far below the ability we were given.

The sages say in the Mishnah: “Give Him from what is His, for you and yours are His” (Avot 3:7). This short sentence changes the entire perspective. When a person gives charity, time, strength, or talent to the service of God, he is not giving the Holy One, blessed be He, something that was independent of Him to begin with. “You and yours are His.” The hand that gives is also a gift. The money that is given is also a gift. Even the ability to choose to give is a gift.

From here comes a great responsibility. A gift is not only something to enjoy. Sometimes a gift is also a mission.

If a person was given a special ability to teach, perhaps it is not only a way to earn a living. If he has a heart capable of listening, perhaps there are people around him who need that ear. If he has money, perhaps part of the reason he holds more is so he can hold others up as well. If he has life experience, perhaps someone younger needs to receive wisdom from him.

The question is not only: what do I have?

The question is: what is it doing in my hands?

This becomes especially powerful during the Ten Days of Repentance. We ask the Holy One, blessed be He, for another year. We say, “Remember us for life,” “Write us in the Book of Life.” But if we ask for another year, perhaps we should also ask: what do I want to do with the year I am asking for?

Not merely live it. Use it.

A person asks for another year with his children. What will he do with that time? A person asks for good livelihood. What kind of person will he be if it arrives? A person asks for health. What will he do with his body when he has strength? A person asks for success. What will that success do in the world besides improving his own situation?

This is not an easy question: if all my requests on Rosh Hashanah are granted, who besides me will benefit?

If I ask for money, health, satisfaction, success, wisdom, strength, and influence, and in the end all the blessings stop with me, perhaps I have not yet fully understood what a blessing is.

Abraham receives an enormous promise from the Holy One, blessed be He: “I will bless you and make your name great,” but the verse does not stop there. It immediately says: “And you shall be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2).

Not only: you will be blessed.

You will become a blessing.

That is an enormous difference. One person wants good to come to him. Another wants the good he received to pass through him to others.

Perhaps this is why the self-examination of Shabbat Shuvah should include not only a list of sins, but also a list of assets. Not bank assets. Assets of the soul.

What is in me?

What can I do?

Whom can I help?

What experience have I been through that can strengthen another person?

What door opened for me that I can use to open a door for someone else?

Here we need to guard against a thought that makes a person small. Someone says: what do I really have to give? I am not wealthy, not a great Torah scholar, not an important officeholder.

But often the greatest gifts are not the things we measure in money.

One person has an hour free and can learn with a child. One woman knows how to notice someone who has been left alone and bring her into the circle. One person knows how to say a good word at exactly the right moment. A grandfather has a life story his grandchildren need to hear. A father’s greatest gift to his child tonight may be to put down the phone and truly be with him.

Not every mission has to change the world.

Sometimes it has to change one person’s world.

Then Moses’ words become very personal: “He made you and established you.” You were not born by accident with the exact combination of strengths, experience, family, opportunities, and abilities that you have. We do not know all the calculations of Heaven, but we do know that Torah demands that a person use what was given to him for the service of God and for doing good.

Perhaps there is one question worth asking before Yom Kippur: what gift I received from the Holy One, blessed be He, has still barely become a blessing to others?

Not: what major sin am I going to repair? Which gift am I going to begin using properly?

Perhaps you have knowledge. Teach someone.

You have money. Give some.

You have time. Dedicate some.

You have a relationship with a child who still wants to speak with you. Do not wait.

You have the ability to make peace with someone. Take the step.

You have a voice people listen to. Use it to lift, not to diminish.

Then Yom Kippur gains another meaning. We do not ask the Holy One, blessed be He, only to erase what we damaged. We ask Him to give us life again so we can do more with it.

“Remember us for life” is not only a request: give me more time.

It can also be a commitment: if You give me time, I want it to be worth something.

This brings us back to the question of the father with whom we began. He did not ask his son how much money he earned. He asked: “Now that you received so much ability, what are you doing with it?”

Perhaps that is the question Moses leaves us in Haazinu: “Is this how you repay the Lord?”

Look at what you received, and then look at what you are returning to the world.

Not out of guilt.

Out of responsibility.

Because in the end, the question is not only how many years we received.

The question is what we did with those years.

Not only how much talent we received.

But how much good came out of it.

Not only how much blessing entered our lives.

But how much of that blessing passed through us to another person.

Perhaps this can be one great resolution for Shabbat Shuvah: choose one gift the Holy One, blessed be He, gave me, and decide that this year it will not remain only with me.

Because the greatest blessing is not merely to be a person who received a great deal.

The greatest blessing is to turn what I received into something that someone else can receive from me.