Get out – it’s a pyramid scheme!

Rabbi Asher Deren, Chabad of the West Coast – Cape Town

The developers had incredible government support, including major tax incentives and a long reputation of similarly successful projects.

When things didn’t go as planned, they were encouraged to bring others to increase their share based on the level of their investment. So, they spoke to family and friends, and they all started getting “in on the action” to the point that some of them even started coming to the development site themselves to see how they could make things come right.

Well, it turns out that what started as a minimal exposure suddenly became a metastasising debt which started to consume my friends’ entire life, ensnaring them in what turned out to be a fraudulent scheme. It destroyed them financially, socially, emotionally, and even spiritually, and of course left them destitute paupers, enslaved to the debt which they now carried for decades thereafter.

I know this story well because my father is the one who bailed them all out, in one hostile takeover of the entire project. He literally “bought them out”, and put the bad guys out of business – for a while.

The bad news is that the con men are still out there.

Yes, 3 331 years after my ancestors were freed from this toxic cycle of slavery servicing a literal pyramid scheme in Egypt, Pharaoh and his treacherous descendants haven’t given up one bit.

From simple “pre-approved!” credit card applications in the mail, to a social group-think that cynically seeks to dismantle our sacred values and divine heritage, society today relentlessly pursues ownership of our most valuable asset – our very selves.

But the good news is that my father, your father, our father in heaven, is still happy to bail us out.

This evening, before you go to sleep, take a moment to recite the Shema… Hashem echad, the fact that the oneness of Hashem is powerful enough to collect the broken pieces of your soul, heart, mind, family, business, community, and make them echad (one) again.

There’s no carry-over debt involved in this buy-out. You simply trade in the slavery you’re suffering from today for a loving relationship with Hashem that frees you to be your ultimate self, serving Hashem through Torah and mitzvah.

Avoid the pyramid scheme. Speak to your father tonight. At the seder, and every night thereafter.