Three Views of Hashgacha Pratit
I have wondered many times how to best translate the Hebrew word Hashgacha השגחה. The common translation is usually “Providence” which I think is okay, but far from providing the full meaning. “Providence” comes from the Latin words “pro” (ahead) and “vedere” (to see), so it implies seeing ahead or planning. However, Hashgacha (which comes from the root, shin gimel chet or ש.ג.ח) means to watch over someone or something. The idea of Divine supervision is similar, except “Providence” in that case relates to a Divine plan for humans, while Hashgacha means constant and real-time supervision.
Jewish tradition differentiates between two types of Hashgacha; Hashgacha Pratit (individual/personal) supervision, and Hashgacha Kelalit (collective/general) supervision.
I’d like to focus on the first type - that of personal or individual supervision, and examine how differently Jewish thinkers viewed the concept.
But first, this week’s double Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora. These parashiyot largely deal with skin diseases. How to identify them, procedures of quarantine, treatment, the path to healing, and returning to the community. Numerous commentaries and ideas have been suggested to answer the question, “Why do two entire portions of the book of Leviticus revolve around this topic?”
The most famous suggestion, spearheaded and made known by the Chafetz Chaim, is that skin diseases in the Torah are a physical manifestation of Lashon Hara (evil tongue).
However, I’d like to focus on another direction which relates to the idea of Personal Supervision.
Midrash Tanchuma on Tazria tells the following story:
“There is a story about a certain priest who examined leprosy spots. When he became poor, he wanted to go abroad. He called his wife [and] said to her, “Because people used to come to me to show their leprosy spots, it is hard for me to leave them. Rather come and let me teach you, so that you may examine the leprosy spots. If you see a person's hair with its follicle dried up, you will know that [such a person] is stricken; because for each and every hair the Holy One, blessed be He, has created its own separate follicle from which it drinks. If its follicle dries up, the hair dries up.” His wife said to him, “But surely if, for each and every hair, the Holy One, blessed be He, has created its own separate follicle [from which it drinks], in your case, since you are a human being, with so many hairs on you and with your children being supported by you, is it not all the more certain that the Holy One, blessed be He, will summon support for you?” Therefore, she did not allow him to go abroad.”
This story is an example of Hashgacha Pratit - just like every single hair on our heads has its own follicle, so does every single person have their own source which provides for them. This priest’s wife learned that her husband did not need to go abroad in order to find ways to support their family because God was constantly with her husband providing for him wherever he was.
The late professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say that God was not a “city parking controller” nor a clerk at the DMV nor an IRS agent. To him, the idea that God watches over every individual and, for example, helps a parking spot become vacant right when the person needed it was ridiculous.
Leibowitz was a Rambamist. The Rambam did not believe in this type of hashgacha, (Hashgacha Pratit). His idea of hashgacha was a complex one. It can be found in the third part of Moreh Nevuchim - his Guide for the Perplexed.
“Understand thoroughly my theory, that I do not ascribe to God ignorance of anything or any kind of weakness; I hold that Divine Providence is related to and closely connected with the intellect, because Providence can only proceed from an intelligent being, from a being that is itself the most perfect Intellect. Those creatures, therefore, which receive part of that intellectual influence will become subject to the action of Providence in the same proportion as they are acted upon by the Intellect. This theory is in accordance with reason and with the teaching of Scripture.”
The Rambam, influenced by Aristotle, believed that though God created the world, its basic natural laws act on their own with no supervision. Therefore, natural occurrences and the well-being of animals were not supervised or interfered with. Unlike Aristotle, who included human beings in this theory, the Rambam believed that supervision was tied to intellect and therefore existed in people. The level of supervision acted in accordance with the level of intellect. For example “the wicked” were less supervised.
The Rambam explains this through the following example:
“A building falls over a person who sits under it and kills them.” The building has no direct supervision, it has no intellect and only adheres to the basic natural laws established through creation. The person, however, who was given the intellect, has the choice of whether to sit under a building that looks old and rundown, putting themselves at risk. Supervision is by giving the person the ability to choose.
In a stark contrast to the Rambam, the approach of Hasidut to Hashgacha Pratit stemming from Haba’al Shem Tov, suggests that supervision is everywhere, all the time and in everything. Here are are few lines from Keter Shem Tov - a collection of Haba’al Shem Tov teachings as written by his students:
הנה תנועת אחד הדשאים הצומח בעמקי יער או באחד ההרים הגבוהים או בעמקים היותר עמוקים אשר לא עבר שם איש, הנה לא זו בלבד דתנועת הדשא ההוא לימינו ולשמאלו לפנים ולאחור בכל משך ימי חייו הוא עפ"י השגחה פרטית.
“…here is the movement of a blade of grass that grows in the valleys of a forest or on one of the high mountains or in the deeper valleys that no one has passed through, here is not only the movement of that blade of grass to its right and left, forward and backward, throughout its entire life, it is according to private providence.”
According to Hasidic approach, even the movement of a single blade of grass is supervised. Hasidut Chabad and the Tanya would even expand this concept to mean that everything, all the time, is constantly being created.
The idea of “hashgacha” is complicated. It is very hard for us to grapple with the thought that there is supervision at all, witnessing the horrors and the suffering that continuously occur in our world. At the same time, many people of faith do believe that even these horrors and all the suffering is a part of a divine plan, supervision, or some sort of grand harmony which is progressing somewhere.
Over the years, I have been thinking a lot about the Rambam’s approach to supervision, which is of course problematic, since sometimes, no matter how intelligent a person is, they are still condemned to great suffering which has nothing to do with choice.
The Hasidic approach is even harder to understand in this light.
Therefore, I would now like to introduce a third approach to supervision that is brought by Rav Kook.
According to Rav Kook, supervision manifests in the force that was put on humans. This drives everything in the world, and that is the force which constantly wishes to achieve perfection. The divine trait of perfection is in each one of us. We will never achieve perfection but striving toward it is what drives everything forward. This, according to Rav Kook, is a divine power which constantly protects us all.
The following poem - The Thirst, written by him, expresses this approach beautifully:
The Thirst - Rav Kook
And from within me, from within my eyes
Behold, I am always obliged to take
The hidden treasures
And within me I am always bound
To it, the holy grief
Of the demand of that supreme perfection
And there is no fulfillment even once
It cannot ever be fulfilled
Because this, this is the trait
It is it, the eternal weaving
The basis of which is thirst.
The basis of which is the divine thirst
Which no other thing in the world
Will ever satisfy
Only the one who is asked for it
Only the thirst
Will be more and more revealed
And more and more recognized
It alone
Becomes the source of all pleasure
The source of all spiritual delights
The divine splendor
And therefore I am always happy
But never satisfied
הצימאון
וּמִתּוֹךְ תּוֹכִי, מִתּוֹךְ מַעְיָנַי
הִנְנִי צָרִיךְ תָּמִיד לָקַחַת
אֶת הָאוֹצָרוֹת הַגְּנוּזִים
וּבְתוֹךְ תּוֹכִי אֲנִי קָשׁוּר תָּמִיד
לְאוֹתוֹ הַצַּעַר הַקָּדוֹשׁ
שֶׁל אוֹתָהּ דְּרִישַׁת שְׁלֵמוּת עֶלְיוֹנָה
וְאֵין הִיא מִתְמַלֵּאת אַף פַּעַם
אֵין הִיא יְכוֹלָה אַף פַּעַם לְהִתְמַלְּאוֹת
כִּי זוֹהִי זוֹהִי הַתְּכוּנָה
זוֹהִי זוֹ הָעֲרִיגָה הַנִּצְחִית
שֶׁיְּסוֹדָהּ הוּא צִמָּאוֹן.
שֶׁיְּסוֹדָהּ הַצִּמָּאוֹן הָאֱלֹהִי
אֲשֶׁר כָּל דָּבָר אַחֵר שֶׁבָּעוֹלָם
לֹא יַרְוֶה אוֹתוֹ אַף פַּעַם
כִּי אִם הַמְּבֻקָּשׁ לְבַדּוֹ
כִּי אִם הַצִּמָּאוֹן לְבַדּוֹ
יְחַשֵּׂף תָּמִיד יוֹתֵר וְיוֹתֵר
וְיֻכַּר תָּמִיד יוֹתֵר וְיוֹתֵר
הוּא בְּעַצְמוֹ
מִתְהַפֵּךְ הוּא לִמְקוֹר כָּל עֹנֶג
לְמָכוֹן כָּל הָעֲדָנִים הָרוּחָנִיִּים
לְזִיו הַשֵּׁם
וְלָכֵן תָּמִיד אֲנִי שָׂמֵחַ
אֲבָל אַף פַּעַם לֹא מְרֻצֶּה
('הָרַבִּי מִלּוּבָּבִיץ)
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ye'ela Rosenfeld
