In the world of Torah there are two kinds of trust. One with effort and one without. So the story of King Asa is interpreted according to which opinion you go with. (King Asa went to doctors and was punished. There is a question: What did he do wrong? ) If you go with Navardok and the Gra, then the sin of Asa was to go to doctors. Period. If you hold with the Chovot Levavot [Obligations of the Heart-the first Musar book] and the Ramban (Nachmanides), then the sin was to go to doctors without trusting in God also.
[Incidentally, Reb Nachman did not hold from doctors at all. That is not related to the issue of trust. It is just that he thought doctors, only do damage. Some people have pointed out the state of medicine in his days was basically medieval, in which case it is certainly true that whatever doctor did only did damage. But is it so obvious that today things are all that different?]
The confusing thing is Navardok (Joseph Yozel Horvitz) brings some statement by the Ramban that is supposed to be going like the Gra. And no one knows where it is. There is one Ramban (that my learning partner mentioned to me in an unrelated vein) about the name El Shadai which seems to suggest this.
My opinion about this is that trust in God is applicable to transcendence. It is the world of the thing in itself that, if you use logic to understand it, it generates contradictions. It is classical Kant.[And Hegel agrees with this. But Hegel still believes that reason can get to the Ding An Sich by a dialectical process. And you have to say that King David was of the opinion when he told Solomon his son, דע את אלהי אביך ועבדהו "know the God of your father an serve him." Clearly King David and the Rambam were in agreement with Hegel.]
I think there are different levels of "dinge an sich's." That is plural "things in themselves" as Kant originally conceived of them. Not just Schopenhauer's singular "thing in itself" which is the "Will." But we don't want the aspect of the "thing in itself" of regular objects to be the same as Schopenhauer's either. We want at every level from (1) all form and no numinous content all the way up to (2) no form and all numinous content to have different levels of transcendence. What we would get from that is the essence of trust that is transcendent, but not the same degree of transcendence as God himself. And that would go a long way to solve this dilemma between the Gra and the Chovot Levavot.
And I think this is clear. Only the individual can feel if the present situation he is in requires action according to the Torah or not. If the Torah itself requires action, then clearly trust is not a reason not to act. But sometimes logic or reason requires action, but not the Torah; and then it is best not to act but to trust.
To see for yourself get the book Madragat HaAdam and look up the "Gate of Trust." Or more accurately let me say: look up the Gra he brings there on the book of Proverbs ch. 3 where it says, "Trust in God with all your heart, and do not depend on your intelligence."
At any rate, the basic idea of the Madragat haAdam [Joseph Horvitz of Navardok is trust in God and learn Torah. It has nothing to do with institutions. In this day and age, I think learning at home is much better than any synagogue. The best thing, of course, is if one has an authentic Litvak yeshiva in the area, but I have never seen or heard of anything like that except in Bnei Brak and in NY and Rav Zilverman's Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem that goes by the path of the Gra.
[Incidentally, Reb Nachman did not hold from doctors at all. That is not related to the issue of trust. It is just that he thought doctors, only do damage. Some people have pointed out the state of medicine in his days was basically medieval, in which case it is certainly true that whatever doctor did only did damage. But is it so obvious that today things are all that different?]
The confusing thing is Navardok (Joseph Yozel Horvitz) brings some statement by the Ramban that is supposed to be going like the Gra. And no one knows where it is. There is one Ramban (that my learning partner mentioned to me in an unrelated vein) about the name El Shadai which seems to suggest this.
My opinion about this is that trust in God is applicable to transcendence. It is the world of the thing in itself that, if you use logic to understand it, it generates contradictions. It is classical Kant.[And Hegel agrees with this. But Hegel still believes that reason can get to the Ding An Sich by a dialectical process. And you have to say that King David was of the opinion when he told Solomon his son, דע את אלהי אביך ועבדהו "know the God of your father an serve him." Clearly King David and the Rambam were in agreement with Hegel.]
I think there are different levels of "dinge an sich's." That is plural "things in themselves" as Kant originally conceived of them. Not just Schopenhauer's singular "thing in itself" which is the "Will." But we don't want the aspect of the "thing in itself" of regular objects to be the same as Schopenhauer's either. We want at every level from (1) all form and no numinous content all the way up to (2) no form and all numinous content to have different levels of transcendence. What we would get from that is the essence of trust that is transcendent, but not the same degree of transcendence as God himself. And that would go a long way to solve this dilemma between the Gra and the Chovot Levavot.
And I think this is clear. Only the individual can feel if the present situation he is in requires action according to the Torah or not. If the Torah itself requires action, then clearly trust is not a reason not to act. But sometimes logic or reason requires action, but not the Torah; and then it is best not to act but to trust.
To see for yourself get the book Madragat HaAdam and look up the "Gate of Trust." Or more accurately let me say: look up the Gra he brings there on the book of Proverbs ch. 3 where it says, "Trust in God with all your heart, and do not depend on your intelligence."
At any rate, the basic idea of the Madragat haAdam [Joseph Horvitz of Navardok is trust in God and learn Torah. It has nothing to do with institutions. In this day and age, I think learning at home is much better than any synagogue. The best thing, of course, is if one has an authentic Litvak yeshiva in the area, but I have never seen or heard of anything like that except in Bnei Brak and in NY and Rav Zilverman's Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem that goes by the path of the Gra.
