Faith Isn’t Certainty. Faith Is Acting Like You’re Seen.
Vayeshev and the God Who Sees Us
Faith Isn’t Certainty. Faith Is Acting Like You’re Seen.
I was twenty years old, and we had been dating for about a month—long enough that I liked him and cared what he thought.
We were driving over the George Washington Bridge with the city behind us and the river beneath when I told him about a fellowship I desperately wanted and did not get.
The rejection had hit me hard. I felt embarrassed even saying it out loud.
Almost automatically, I reached for the sentence I had been telling myself to soften the disappointment: “I’m sure it’s for the best. God must have another plan.”
He didn’t offer reassurance or sympathy. Instead, in the same cerebral tone he brought to every conversation, he said, “That might make you feel better, but it’s probably not true.”
Then he reminded me of Maimonides’ position on providence—on how God intervenes in our individual lives. For Maimonides, the closer you are to God, the more divine attention your life receives, the more the events of your life reflect God’s intervention.
For most of us, living in that uncertain middle space, small events unfold according to the natural order, not direct divine intervention.
“You probably just didn’t get in,” he said.
We ended up breaking up not long after, for many reasons unrelated to this moment. But his reaction that night landed harder than he intended.
It wasn’t just about a lack of empathy. He had named something I hadn’t yet examined—the possibility that the story I’d been telling myself wasn’t actually my theology. It was my coping mechanism.
I didn’t have a response that night. But his words stayed with me, and over the years they became a question I’ve struggled with:
If “God has a plan” isn’t the whole story, what does it actually mean to see God in my life?
Jewish thought offers multiple frameworks for providence—how, when, and whether God intervenes in human lives.
Although Maimonides sharply restricts divine intervention, Nachmanides—often presented as his philosophical foil—expands it, envisioning a more continuous divine presence in the details of our lives.
Many people today adhere to a popular version of that view found in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who insisted that everything carries spiritual significance.
Even a blade of grass has its own divine tune, with an angel asking it to grow.
Each approach contains beauty and solace, with providence giving shape and meaning to the most amazing and bewildering moments of our lives.
But I’ve also seen dangerous ways in which people apply the idea of divine intervention.
I’ve seen people cloak irresponsibility in the language of faith—refusing medical care or basic precautions because “God will take care of it,” or rejecting IDF national service because God alone will keep us Jews safe.
I’ve also seen the theological crisis that follows when something terrible happens, and the promised meaning never arrives.
So I found myself for years after that conversation on the GW Bridge searching for another way to understand providence—one that preserves its moral insight without bending reality or surrendering responsibility.
A midrash about Reuben in this week’s parasha, Vayeshev, offers a way forward.
Reuben is Jacob’s oldest son, the one prone to trying and failing. When the other brothers plot to kill Joseph—furious at his dreams and their father’s favoritism—Reuben persuades them to throw him into a pit instead, planning to return later and rescue him.
But while he is gone, the brothers sell Joseph to passing merchants. When Reuben returns and finds the pit empty, he tears his clothes in grief.
The Torah inserts a striking line: “Reuben heard and saved him from their hands” (Gen. 37:21).
But he didn’t save him. He only intended to.
A beautiful Midrash in Ruth Rabbah comments: If Reuben had only known that the Holy One would record his attempt as if it had succeeded, he would have carried Joseph back to his father on his shoulders.
This midrash’s psychological insight is its theology: not certainty about how God orchestrates every detail, but living as though our choices matter to God—as though every effort to do right is witnessed and recorded. Not because the outcome is guaranteed, but because the attempt itself carries weight.
This, I think, is what believing in providence can actually mean for us.
Reuben would have acted more boldly—not because success was guaranteed, but because he would have felt seen.
But Reuben’s story is incomplete without Joseph’s.
In this week’s Torah portion, all we see is Joseph’s tragic descent: thrown into a pit, sold into slavery, falsely accused, and imprisoned. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noted, if we stop reading here, we would see only tragedy.
But Joseph’s story continues. He rises to power in Egypt and eventually reunites with his brothers.
In one of the most powerful moments in the Torah, Joseph looks back at all his suffering and tells his brothers: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
His insight is profound. Rabbi Sacks explains it this way: “We live life looking forward but we understand it only looking back.”
Joseph couldn’t have known, while sitting in prison, that his suffering was leading anywhere meaningful.
He acted with integrity—refusing advances from his master’s wife, interpreting dreams, showing up even when there was no reason to hope. He did not abdicate responsibility for his own actions. Only later could he look back and find divine intervention in what had happened.
Reuben and Joseph together teach us about living a life that sees God everywhere:
Reuben shows us how to act in the moment: with the courage that comes from believing we are witnessed.
Joseph shows us how to make meaning looking back: seeing purpose in what we’ve endured.
Together, they offer a way to live with faith that doesn’t require certainty that God controls every outcome, but invites us to believe our efforts matter and that meaning can emerge from even our darkest moments.
I’ve been testing this idea in real time. I broke my foot recently during a simple walk in Miami Beach. I took one wrong step.
I’ve lost count of the number of people who react to me limping along by telling me, “God must have had a reason.”
Maybe. But I don’t think God rearranged my ligaments. I think pregnancy makes women more prone to fractures, and I took a bad step.
Still, I’ve tried to make meaning from it: slowing down, asking for help, noticing the daily struggles of people who cannot speed through their lives. I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can better support the lives of the thousands of Israeli soldiers living with permanent injuries.
I don’t have certainty, and I plan to approach my injury responsibly by being more careful in the future.
But I’m also trying to approach this with a God-centered perspective—how can I look back on this and find meaning? How can it strengthen my understanding that everything we do has transformative power in the world and that God is watching us?
And this brings me back to that night on the GW Bridge.
My date might have been right. I’ll never know. I don’t know if that fellowship rejection was divine intervention, cosmic accident, the selection committee having a bad day, or if I was just less qualified than the other applicants.
But I know what I did with it. I chose to make meaning from it. I pursued other opportunities, worked hard, and when I achieved something, I thanked God—not because I was certain God directed the rejection, but because our tradition gives us the model of Joseph, who was able to look backward and find God’s hand guiding his life.
We don’t need certainty about how God acts to live lives of purpose. We only need to believe that what we do matters. That we are witnessed. That our efforts echo.
Meaning may come later, as it did for Joseph. But the courage to act comes now.
And for most of us, that is providence enough.
I had such a fun time joining Chaya Leah and Yael Bar Tuv on their Ask A Jew podcast 🎙️✨ Chaya Leah is an Orthodox Chabad educator on the West Coast, and Yael is a secular Israeli in NYC — which makes for a pretty incredible mix.
We ended up having a far-ranging conversation about Israel, Zionism, the shows we’re watching, gender and Orthodoxy, leadership, and so much more. Honestly, the real mark of a great podcast is whether the conversation keeps going after the recording stops — and on a very busy workday, that’s exactly what happened 🙌 Give it a listen! 🎧
Thank you for this thoughtful message. I do harken back to learning that Hashem doesn't work for us, but rather we are to walk in His ways. It is difficult to understand how free will works when Hashem is outside of time and would already know the results of the decisions and actions people make. Perhaps all we can hope for, as you say, is that our efforts will be noticed and have merit.
שבת שלום ואני מקווה אותך רפואה שלמה בשביל הרגל שלך
Really beautiful dvar and reflection, Dr. Bitton, and Shabbat shalom!
Back before I made teshuvah (ie, in my Christian days 😐), I read Dr Kate Bowler’s “Everything Happens for a Reason (And Other Lies I’ve Loved)”, which—albeit with a really different starting point and theology—wrestles with the “G-d has a plan” platitude (dogma?). Personally, I hate the “G-d had a plan” bit for the same reasons Kate does. At 27, I received a life-altering rare disease* diagnosis** induced by an ankle surgery nearly three years ago to the day—I’d run 25 miles in the week before surgery, and I’d gotten married one month before… Yes, I've def matured as a person of faith (Jewish or otherwise), young man, spouse, etc., but I can't accept that the growth I've experienced in three years truly required the literally crippling pain and disability that came with it. I can’t believe in a relational, living, loving G-d—the Tanakhic G-d—whose plan for me involved putting me in so much pain at times that Ive wanted to kms. The G-d of the Tanakh and Rabbis never did that; why would I be special in the worst way!?
On the other hand, the relational, living, loving G-d I brought into my comment above provided scientists and then physicians with advanced technology since 2015-ish that has brought my pain and disability to heel over the past few months—I’m a legit cyborg now, having had a dorsal root ganglion neurostimulator implanted at my right L4 and L5 in mid-September. I’m still healing (it’ll take about a year to fully recover, get through PT, find my optimal settings, and find my new energy-level normal) and will always have residual symptoms, the doctors say. Still, something like the divine plan I’ve railed against doesn’t seem quite as outlandish as it used to…
*like, it’s on the government’s list of rare diseases lmao.
**a neurological condition known as type 2 complex regional pain syndrome