The Jewish “New Year”, Rosh Hashana, has just ended. I have been privileged to be teaching in Jerusalem where several people have asked me the same question. If God judges every human on this holyday, and furthermore He determines the fate of everyone including their financial fortunes, why bother working? Everything is up to God and He will find a way to get into my bank account whatever He has deemed that I should have. It so happens that I was fully prepared for this question since I asked it of one of my teachers many years ago. I will confess there was a spirit of mischievousness in my inquiry that was utterly absent from the sincere and intelligent questioners who confronted me. The answer is that God does not declare actual dollar amounts. However, what He does do is establish the ‘cosmic exponents’ that will convert your efforts into actual dollar amounts. For one person, X amount of effort will produce Y amount of return, for another it might be Z amount of return. Obviously when X is zero, meaning no work and no effort, regardless of whether you square it, cube it or multiply it by ten thousand, the result will always be zero. No effort generally = no return. God put is in the Garden to work it; to exert our energy towards combating the entropy He built into the system for our benefit. This is why we know that closing our store on this website on Sabbath and Holydays is what God expects of us. While there may often be what appear to be temporary exceptions, we are always judged and God’s response is ultimately in accordance with our effort.