Miller's Musings Parshas Vayetze: Cause and Effect 101

As is the case with many of the great female personalities in the Torah, Rochel was subjected to a painful existence waiting to be able to bear a child, all the while praying with devotion and acting with total subjugation to Hashem’s Will.  This wait finally comes to an end in our Parsha when Hashem finally “opens her womb”.  The Soforno explains that it was specifically at this time that Hashem chose to listen to her prayers after she had performed two particular acts of ‘hishtadlus’, one’s own effort to achieve an intended goal, in this case being mother to a child.  The combination of her fervent supplications and her own endeavours brought about her salvation. We know that everything comes from the Almighty, which makes it difficult to understand why an act performed with one’s own efforts, which could lead to a false sense of one’s own power, is of a higher level than one done with total belief and reliance on Hashem?

As with all acts of the soul, there are a myriad levels of performance, with an infinite opportunity for self-development and growth.  The Sifsei Chaim explains that the concept of hishtadlus together with prayer in its highest form is the knowledge that in actual fact it is solely the prayer that yields the end result despite the actions that have been carried out.  Although Hashem wants us to invest our own time and energy into making something happen on a physical level, just as He requires us to appeal to Him for this goal, it is in truth not our exertions that ultimately make it happen, but rather our words of beseeching are the actual cause and effect for this outcome.  To achieve this level of awareness of the true nature of this process is an even greater plane of service than relying exclusively on prayer.

The path that we take in our own lives is often to rely on prayer only as a last ditch attempt to resolve any issues, when all other means have been exhausted.  If at this point we finally receive what we have requested, we more often than not attribute it to our own physical energies rather than our prayer.  Yet the more we realise that this is in fact not the case, and that our hishtadlus is only a means in which we can further develop our trust and belief in Hashem as the Provider of all that we receive, the more we will in fact be worthy of receiving the good which Hashem bestows upon us.  Prayer is not for when all else fails, but the true source of all we have. 

May the prayers of Shabbos bring tremendous good to the world.

L'ilui Nishmas Leah bas Avrohom