What Tibor Rubin Taught Me About Resentment

By Samuel Yudin

Halfway through my military career, I began a profound transformation. Until then, I had excelled individually and as a direct supervisor through integrity, rigor, and hard work. Adherence to quality and process came naturally to me. While these qualities are essential building blocks for initial success, they alone are not sustainable for long-term growth. I realized I needed to soften my rough edges, look up from my work, and see how I fit into the bigger picture.

While my nose was to the proverbial grindstone, I had failed to adequately assess whether my coworkers, key stakeholders, and I were moving in the same direction. I knew my specific area inside and out, and so did my team, but I lacked a connection to the whole. I had not yet felt the truth of John Donne’s famous words, “No man is an island,” or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s insight that “Every man is an inlet.”

My perspective began to change once I decided to let go of frustration and resentment. I came to understand that even “righteous” criticism and “justified” resentment are among life’s greatest self-inflicted wounds. While focused on my own self-improvement, I found myself frustrated that others who seemed less committed to doing good work or good deeds were achieving similar success. I realized I needed to shift my focus exclusively to what I could control: my own attitude and my own deeds.

I began to embrace gratitude. This attitudinal shift allowed me to see the bigger picture and interact with others from a place of maturity. I started to view those in the larger organization not as rivals or underperforming colleagues, but as unique, essential pieces of a puzzle working toward shared success. That perspective made me a better teammate and ultimately accelerated my own career.

What triggered this focus on gratitude and positive psychology? The answer is Tibor Rubin.

In 2010, I began visiting Tibor Rubin at the VA hospital in Long Beach, California, before Shabbat every Friday on my way home from the base. I was introduced to him by my first-grade teacher, Rabbi Moshe Engel; my family was already close friends with Tibor and his family. Rabbi Engel was widely known and respected for the joy he brought to educating children about Jewish values, which are pivotal to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Rabbi Engel was a direct conduit for a tradition of positive psychology that traced back through the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to the movement’s founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, and ultimately to the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov.

This reconnection happened at a pivotal time in my career. The Rebbe taught that everything happens for a reason, a concept known as Hashgacha Pratit (Divine Providence). As I stood on the precipice of a promotion to a senior leadership rank, I needed to soften my rough edges. Reconnecting to my faith and community was the essential first step.

Tibor Rubin’s life was a testament to the power of gratitude. Born in Pásztó, Hungary, on June 18, 1929, to a Jewish family, he was rounded up by the Nazis at just 13 years old and sent to concentration camps. After being liberated by American soldiers, he vowed out of sheer gratitude to become a “GI Joe.” Tibor eventually emigrated to America and, after overcoming many obstacles, joined the U.S. Army.

He was deployed to Korea during the Korean War, where an antisemitic superior repeatedly sent him into harm’s way. When Tibor was recommended for the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions, that same superior intentionally failed to submit the paperwork. Tibor was eventually captured and sent to a POW camp, where he risked his life to save dozens of his fellow prisoners. More than 50 years later, in 2005, Tibor was finally awarded the Medal of Honor at a White House ceremony that Rabbi Engel, fittingly, attended.

Despite the unimaginable hardships he endured, the theme of gratitude burst forth from Tibor’s life and story. He had every reason to harbor righteous, justified resentment. His family had been murdered in the Holocaust, he had faced life-threatening antisemitism, and he had been brutally mistreated as a POW. Yet he refused to inflict that resentment upon himself. Instead, he maintained a legendary positive disposition rooted in gratitude.

If Tibor Rubin refused to be resentful, how could I be? How could I self-inflict a wound that would threaten my own success and happiness? I couldn’t. Through Tibor’s example, I relearned the timeless lessons of gratitude and positive psychology. These were lessons passed down from the Baal Shem Tov through the Rebbe to my first-grade teacher and embodied by a man who clung to gratitude despite the worst horrors of war and the Holocaust.

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Samuel Yudin recently retired from the United States Army as a brigade-level command sergeant major after a 27-year career. Yudin refined his isotropic leadership across the military, security, intelligence, and aerospace and defense industries. He holds a master’s degree in leadership studies from the University of Texas at El Paso and was a 2022 nonresident fellow at the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Modern Warfare Institute.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.