Walk into a Jewish bookstore, pick up a pamphlet in a synagogue, listen to a talk or glance at a bumper sticker, and one word appears again and again: bitachon, trust in God. In its maximalist form, its meaning is simple: surrender your agency, rely on Heaven and await Divine deliverance. Relax, in other words, and trust in God.
The idea has deep roots, but its dominance in popular religious literature is modern. Earlier popular Jewish works focused far more on reward and punishment, perhaps a harsher topic. Today, however, bitachon and Divine Providence are almost ubiquitous, filling popular books and Torah classes.
The debate is old, stretching back to ancient and then medieval times.
In the early modern period, Chassidic sources often stressed trustful reliance on God, while a more activist strain in Lithuanian thought emphasized initiative and personal responsibility.
In his bleak memoir of his Polish shtetl childhood, Israel Joshua Singer captured the contrast between his complacent Chassidic father and his stern Mitnagdic grandfather. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, in the Lithuanian tradition, rejected what he called “the folly of religious quietism.”
The biblical King David stands at the center of this debate. His beautiful, prayerful poetry in Tehillim (the book of Psalms) is repeatedly invoked as an expression of dependence upon God, often presented as the biblical model of passive trust.
Maimonides gives us a famous, now almost politicized proof text in this debate. At the end of his laws of shemitah and Yovel, he describes a person who sets himself apart to serve God, casts off “the yoke of the many calculations which people seek” and makes God “his portion and inheritance.” He then cites King David, who declared God to be “my inheritance.”
On its own, the passage sounds like a charter for withdrawal from worldly efforts. It is, in fact, read this way by many Haredi leaders in Israel today in the debate over whether yeshivah students should be exempt from military service.
Yet open the book of Samuel, and the David before us is almost relentlessly active. He fights wars, flees enemies, forges alliances, governs a kingdom, suppresses rebellions, captures Jerusalem and establishes it as Israel’s capital. In other places in his writings, Maimonides presents David as the model king, devoted to Jewish law while courageously fighting God’s battles.
So how do we harmonize these two pictures of trusting in God alongside human activism?
Perhaps the bitachon David spoke about in his poetry meant something active. He trusted God as a legislator. He trusted God’s commandments. Therefore, he stood up and performed them with all his might.
As a king, that meant governing, judging, fighting and leading. Trust in God did not mean waiting for God to act in his place. It meant trusting that God had empowered him with the right laws to adhere to.
Read alongside Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, the “many calculations” David cast aside were not work or responsibility, but private ambitions and distractions. God was David’s “portion” because God’s will directed his life. David himself says as much in his great song of thanksgiving: “For all His laws were before me, and I did not depart from His statutes.”
Strikingly, this is the exact middle verse of the poem. King David trusted in God and so strove to keep His commandments.
This year marks my mother’s third yahrzeit. She died in her early 50s. Despite serious illness, each morning she quietly learned a chapter of Nach, which covers the books of the prophets and writings, no matter her pain or paralyzing prognosis, and then got on with the rest of her day. Whatever she was feeling, she remained naturally friendly and welcoming, and showered kindness, care and concern upon all those around her.
Perhaps that is why the active reading of bitachon resonated with me. The word is everywhere today—in our shuls, pamphlets and speeches. It can certainly mean “relax, trust in God.” But it can also mean something harder.
We do not know God’s plan for us, but we do know His commandments: to act, to do what is right, and to be pleasant to others and to our Creator. As King David noted, “Praiseworthy are those who keep His commandments.”
This year, in memory of my mother, I wrote “Snapshots of the Spirit,” a short survey of figures from Tanach. Each article is only two pages long. To receive a free copy, email: gavrielcohndt@gmail.com.