Guest Rambler, Sydni Burg
Us, God or Both?
It’s 8:18 PM on a Thursday, and I just turned in my last exam. Well, I turned in the exam at 8:10, but it took me about eight minutes to walk back to my dorm, jump into bed and open my computer. And, might I add, what a liberating eight minutes it’s been.
Completing this school year marks a significant point in my life, as it has come with its challenges, to say the least. I have learned to overcome and persevere, but most importantly, I have learned to fail. And from my failures I have gained indescribable perspective and learned the key to my own power in balancing personal effort with trust in Hashem.
The story really begins in the fall of 2016, when I decided to take a leap of faith and attend seminary for a gap year in Israel. There, my eyes were opened to a world of depth and spirituality, to which I had only previously been exposed in doses. As much as I gained from the program, its core beliefs seemed to juxtapose my own, challenging my Jewish identity. Suddenly, I didn’t have everything figured out. I struggled to reconcile all my beliefs and felt as though my feminist mindset and liberal philosophy rendered me an outlier. I struggled with questions such as, why isn’t the Torah more adaptable to modernity? How could God have expectations that seemingly defy human nature, when He confined us to these bounds in the first place? And, although women and men each have a critical purpose, why don’t those purposes always feel equal in value?
This was the point at which I began to realize my power. I decided to leave the program not despite the fact, but because of the fact that I found these questions so integral to understanding my place in Judaism. After gaining a tremendous foundation from seminary, my mind, racing and throbbing with questions, craved a quieter environment to ruminate these ideas. This was the first time that I felt emboldened to act on my inner voice and intentionally exercised what’s known in Torah literature as “hishtadlus” - the realm of human effort.
Endless questions, judgements and feelings bombarded my train of thought that year. It wasn’t until I began college last fall that a new fixation came along to replace the old, and ironically, it was when I stopped searching for the answers that answers became apparent. Under pressure and in the throes of another challenge, I was forced to reconcile my diverse views, identities and values. Although I can articulate it now, it took months to realize and become comfortable with the fact that each disparate dimension of my identity makes me who I am, and they are therefore inherently harmonious. The limitations of one value may end wherever I decide to place more emphasis on another; values are allowed to compete.
Months of this internal dialogue and moral-philosophical contemplation led me to realize that inner growth seldom comes without deeply-poignant internal unrest. This was the very point at which my prior hishtadlus was met with another Torah concept: trust in God, known as “bitachon,” that I didn’t know I had. I had made a decision, yet I didn’t know what was to come of it. Nevertheless, my instincts continually screamed “gam zu l’tovah,” - this is for the best, reminding myself that God would not give me a challenge that I could not handle. This was a piece of advice that I kindly offered myself many, many times over the following months.
While I was beginning to find internal equilibrium, God apparently had different plans for me. This time, it took a more physical and all-encompassing form. Instead of lying awake contemplating Jewish philosophy, it was the thought of that assignment, project, paper or exam that relentlessly weighed on my mind. While navigating a grueling academic curriculum, I felt an intense social void that my school was unable to fulfill, resulting in another tough trial. Weathering two semesters in a college where I didn’t belong, and the intense discomfort and loneliness that came along with it was far from easy.
Thankfully, I was able to rely on my prior experiences, which had only strengthened my emunah, my faith, in both myself and God. Again, it was in those tough moments that I understood my power in its most raw form because where hishtadlus fails, bitachon prevails (and vice versa). With this in mind, I took the steps to transfer to a more fitting university, where I am thrilled to continue my journey next fall. I faced plenty of rejection along the way and exhausted many options in trying to change my circumstances, but at the end of the day, I simply had to “let go and let God.”
This week’s Parsha, Bekuchotai, is a paradigm for balancing our own efforts and trusting God’s process - hishtadlus and bitachon. It begins with a covenant between God and the Jewish people, which establishes a clear, mutual responsibility to one another. If we keep God’s commandments, we can trust that He will reciprocate with guiding us every step of the way.
This covenant embodies what it means to put in the work, while also wholeheartedly trusting that Hashem is in control. Very simply, God helps those who help themselves. My experiences evoked a relentless battle between hishtadlus and bitachon, not quite knowing when to let go and trust in God after facing failure time and time again. However, it was also these experiences that opened my eyes to their inherent connection. In fact, I learned that they complement one another and actually go hand in hand. We have a responsibility to maintain faith in Hashem, but by the same token, our actions substantiate that faith.
They say that without rain, there can be no rainbow. Although life may be difficult at times, my past will help color my future, as I now understand challenge as an opportunity for growth.
Shabbat shalom,
Sydni
