How Much Hishtadlut (Personal Effort), Part 2

Continued from Part 1

According to Your Own Level 

Next is understanding that this equation depends on your own level of emuna. I heard it said simply: Check your pulse. If you’re nervous or scared, you’re not doing enough hishtadlut to grow your emuna. If you are full of emuna and trust then you’re good. If you feel deep down you can trust Hashem on this, and He is going to come through for you – HE WILL.  

What you believe in – you get. But you have to believe in it! You can and should ask Hashem to help you believe and trust more. To strengthen your emuna and bitachon. But if you don’t think you are doing enough, then you aren’t doing enough – for you. 

But then why would Hashem give medicine and everything if we’re meant to just have emuna? 

The answer is that you need some vessel to receive the blessing. Rabbi Arush says it takes a very big tzaddik indeed to receive just based on prayer alone. That’s why you’re supposed to do SOMETHING. Which is why I answered that the goal to strive for is 99% prayer, 1% action. No matter what there must be some physical vessel to put the spiritual blessing into.  

For instance, with medicine Rabbi Arush recommends trying something natural with prayer so there is a vessel but without heavy physical intervention that you might think the medicine healed you instead of Hashem. This is only when possible and feasible – not urgent or life threatening issues, which Rabbi Arush always says head straight to the hospital and call in a pidyon on the way. But let’s say your back is hurting and it isn’t a medical emergency, so then instead of rushing straight to the doctor you might try some physical therapy exercises plus repentance and personal prayer . 

The big caveat is that you have to really believe it will work! You have to actually have emuna in Hashem. If you have doubts if it will work but don’t want to do the physical hishtadlut, it isn’t going to work. That’s not emuna – it’s just laziness with a tzaddik cover. 

Here is an example – years ago I personally tried to help a woman with a non-cancerous tumor. She understandably really didn’t want surgery. But she wasn’t willing to actually DO the spiritual hishtadlut in place of the physical personal effort (in this case, having the surgery). She kept delaying the surgery but when I would talk to her, I found that she wasn’t putting her energy into thanking Hashem and personal prayer. She wasn’t able to really get to a place of deep emuna and say: “Hashem, you’re doing the very best for me, whatever You want, I want! Thank You for the suffering! Thank you for the tumor! Thank you that I need surgery! Everything is for the BEST!” She just kept saying “I don’t want this surgery; God, make it go away!” as if Hashem had made a mistake and was wrong for sending her this illness. There was also a very clear repentance that was needed here, and she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want to work on anything. She wanted to do a pidyon nefesh and have Rabbi Arush do the work for her and make it go away already – but the tzaddik can only help those who help themselves, and he is forbidden from doing your work for you. Need I tell you that it didn’t work? Eventually she was forced to do the surgery and deal with the difficult rehabilitation. You can’t do NOTHING and expect results.  

Compare that to a story Rabbi Arush brings in The Garden of Healing. A man was diagnosed with a serious cancer, no one should ever know of it. He did a pidyon nefesh with Rabbi Arush and asked for permission to go to Hevron and pray at The Cave of the Patriarchs instead of the grueling treatments. Rabbi Arush agreed, and he went every day to Hevron and prayed there at length, along with many other forms of spiritual personal efforts. His doctor kept calling him and telling him how dangerous his situation was, which ensured that he didn’t get complacent with his prayers. He went for another checkup a few months later – and the scans were totally clean!  

He believed that the Healer of all flesh could certainly heal him, and he put equivalent effort to treatment into prayer and real change. He connected to Hashem, repented, and thanked Hashem with happiness – and was healed! 

*** 

Rachel Avrahami grew up in Los Angeles, CA, USA in a far-off valley where she was one of only a handful of Jews in a public high school of thousands. She found Hashem in the urban jungle of the university. Rachel was privileged to read one of the first copies of The Garden of Emuna in English, and the rest, as they say, is history. She made Aliyah and immediately began working at Breslev Israel.   
  
Rachel is now the Editor of Breslev Israel’s English website. She welcomes questions, comments, articles, and personal stories to her email: rachel.avrahami@breslev.co.il.