I volunteer a few hours each month at the ChesedChicago food co-op, which helps families in our community get kosher food at wholesale prices. They asked me to volunteer because of my advanced computer skills, which I use to update a spreadsheet that calculates their total. Someone else handles the actual payments, of course. Want to volunteer yourself? Check out opportunities at ChesedChicago.
Last time I was there, I had the merit to help R' Efraim Twerski and I mentioned that I had not seen shiurim from him on TorahAnytime.com recently. I will take some credit, therefore, for his more recent post on Bitachon for Everyone. He started with an interesting conversation with a Jew who lives in another town who is a member of a shul that is quite Modern Orthodox. (R' Twerski said that as much as he doesn't like to label people, here it fits.) The man told him that they had five levels of security at the shul. Including, but not limited to, 65 closed circuit cameras to which all members of the shul have 24/? access via an app and also an armed guard. He asked R' Twerski what kind of security his shul here in Chicago has. R' Twerski replied, "We have mezuzos."
Of course, when I say things like that, I get eye-rolling and more. This, though, was R' Twerski; the man had enough derech eretz to just say, "Rabbi, the protection from mezusos only goes so far." Over Yom Tom, R' Twerski gave a shiur or two about ביטחון/reliance on HaShem. Apparently the message didn't get received with much depth. That wasn't surprising to me. However, R' Twerski went on to say that perhaps the man was not completely wrong. Why? Because you can really only rely on HaShem as much as you rely on HaShem. You should definitely listen to R' Twerski's shiur, but I'll tell you how I understand that point.
Of course HaShem runs the world down to the tiniest detail. However, from our human (and therefore limited) perspective, we experience two kinds of השגחה/Divine Providence: פרטית/personalized and כללית/general. Essentially, things like squirrels are directed by השגחה כללית; HaShem wants thousands of squirrels to run around our neighborhoods, but doesn't really care (from our perspective) which squirrel runs up which tree. At the opposite end of the spectrum is how the world is run for the צדיקים גמורים/completely righteous. They see direct supervision, השגחה פרטית, at every turn. How do these two world views co-exist?
The Rambam writes that a family may have money for generations so that one צדיק will be able to take shelter under the eaves of their mansion during a rainstorm. The צדיק will see the rain starting and thank HaShem for providing him with the few minutes of shelter that he needs. That צדיק sees a world run very efficiently and with benevolence. How likely, though, are the people in the house to think that that their success is for that צדיק? They are going to rely on their own business acumen and attribute all success to themselves. They see a world of random events that they are able to navigate for their own advantage.
It's really up to you. The more you rely on HaShem -- which means you accept and execute your obligations -- the more you will see HaShem's השגחה/Divine Providence and therefore the more you can rely on it.
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