We continue with the Bet Halevi who now introduces one of the most important principles of Bitachon, which is that the amount of effort that you put in matches the amount of Bitachon you have. There's no set amount of effort that you have to put in. If you believe, really believe, that this is enough and it’s considered normal practice and it covers the miracle, then that's enough for you. But if you believe that you need more than that, then you do need more than that. He quotes a Chazal that when God says, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh/I will be that I will be,
God is saying, “Just like you act to Me, I act to you.” The amount of reliance that you put in Me, I will reciprocate, and therefore you will need less to get what you need. But as we’ve mentioned many a time from Rav Wolbe, Bitachon is one of the most elusive areas, where people can delude themselves and convince themselves that they’re at a high level when they're really not. It’s a lifetime's work. If you are fooling yourself and need more hishtadlut but do less because you're lazy, or whatever reason, then it will backfire and you will not see success. You'll say, “Hey, I relied on Hashem! What happened?” and it's not going to have a happy ending. As we’ve said, it really depends on the times and the norms.
In the society we live in today, for example, when a woman is in labor, she’s rushed to the hospital and after the baby is born, she general remains there for a day or two. In previous times, the norm was for a woman to give birth at home, assisted by a midwife. Rav Shteinman once said that if a woman today would insist on giving birth at home, that would be considered abnormal and therefore would not be the proper amount of hishtadlut necessary.
(Yes, there are people that have children at home. I'm not taking sides. I'm just quoting the story). On the other hand, if a woman lived a hundred years ago and was rushed to the hospital upon experiencing labor pains, that would be a lack of bitachon.
In each situation, one must take into account what is considered the norm and act upon it. There are no set rules. Times change and levels change.
This concept shows up in another area. When it comes to Shemittah, the Torah commands that we're not allowed to do any agricultural work during the seventh year in Eretz Yisrael. For a full year, the farmer doesn't work his land. The Torah anticipates a question, which is, “What will what we eat in the seventh year if we don't work the land? How we have food?” Hashem says, “Don't worry, I'll send a special blessing during the previous year, so that the land will produce far more than it normally does.” The Seforno asked the question that Only the people that ask the question are blessed, and if you don't ask the question, you're not blessed? Furthermore, he says, Why is the person even asking the question? The Torah promised us, “You'll eat and be satiated.” It doesn't say that there'll be an abundance of food. It sounds like there's the same amount of food and it's going to last longer. What exactly is going on here? The Seforno says there are two tracks.
One track is that the person relies on Hashem and because he relies on Hashem, Hashem will make a miracle. The miracle is that he used to eat a bowl of cereal in the morning for breakfast, and that's what gave him his satiation and nutrition for the day, but now instead of needing to eat one bowl of cereal, he'll only need to eat a half a bowl of cereal.
So the crop of the sixth year will last into the seventh and eighth, because he's eating half the amount. That's the blessing called V’Achaltem V’Sova/You'll eat and be satiated. But if the person asks the question and says, “What am I going to eat?” That means he doesn't believe that that miracle is going to happen. So Hashem says, “Okay, I'll send you a bumper crop. You’ll see exactly what's happening.
You'll understand what's happening. The only thing is that you're going to work twice as much. You’ll have more to pack, you have more to warehouse. It's not an open miracle. You’ll just have a bigger crop, and you'll work harder.
Who decides which way it’s going to happen? You decide. The Elder Novardok adds “What happens to the guy that asked the question, ‘What’s going to be?’
He’ll have a bumper crop, and eat cereal- a full bowl. Then he’ll say to himself, “Wow, isn't it good that I worked hard? If I would've gone with those Bitachon fanatics, I'd be starving now!”
Yes, you created what we call a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because you didn't believe in that promise of God, you do need to work harder. That's what you need. We can never, ever test the bitachon/hishtadlut approach, because no one knows what someone's level is. Therefore, you don't know how much hishtadlut you have to have. You decide. You can always say, “Wow, it's good that I go to work at six in the morning and come home at seven o'clock at night because I’d never make money if I worked from nine to five.”
Well, yes, if you think you have to get to work at six o'clock in the morning and stay until seven, you won't make money from nine to five. You decide your own destiny. But again, it all depends on how much bitachon you have and what the norms are. And that is the difficulty of this balance of bitachon and hishtadlut.
Have a wonderful day.