On Faith in Bitter Times

There is a concept so fundamental to Jewish thought that it appears in Mishlei almost as a throwaway line, a truth so obvious it barely needs stating: Lev melachim v’sarim b’yad Hashem — the heart of kings and ministers is in the hand of God. He turns it wherever He wills.

Donald Trump sat across from Iranian envoys. He signed a deal that leaves the centrifuges spinning, floods Tehran with billions of dollars, and tells the world’s most openly genocidal regime that its survival is not only acceptable but worth $300 billion in reconstruction funds. He called the Prime Minister of Israel a difficult man who should be grateful. He left Hezbollah intact in Lebanon. He did all of this while Mossad directors and presidents made their calculations, while generals argued and diplomats maneuvered, while all the great machinery of human geopolitics groaned and churned.

And G-d looked on.

This is not a counsel of passivity. It is not a suggestion that we throw up our hands, say nu, Hashem will handle it, and go back to our Daf Yomi. The Torah does not ask us to be naive. It asks us to be wise about what we know and what we don’t. And what we know, from Yosef’s pit to Haman’s gallows to the ovens of Europe, is that the story is never over when we think it is over, and the salvation rarely arrives from the direction we were watching.

Let us begin with hakarat hatov, with gratitude, even now, even in a bitter hour. Because we are required to see clearly, and seeing clearly means acknowledging what has genuinely been given.

Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem when the entire world said he wouldn’t dare. He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. He withdrew from the catastrophic Obama nuclear deal in his first term, reimposed sanctions, and eliminated Qasem Soleimani, the architect of a generation of Jewish blood from Buenos Aires to Beirut. He brokered the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab states in a single term. He launched Operation Epic Fury, bombing Iranian nuclear sites and killing the supreme leader who had devoted his life to Israel’s destruction.

These are not nothing. These are extraordinary gifts, and a Jew who cannot say thank you for them because this week’s news is painful is a Jew who has forgotten what hakarat hatov means. It means acknowledging the good even when the same hand that gave it is now causing pain. It means remembering that Pharaoh’s daughter pulled Moshe from the river and we say her name with honor thousands of years later, even though her father was the enemy.

And yet.

The Torah does not ask us to be sycophants. It does not ask us to call a bad deal a good one, to paste a smile over a strategic catastrophe, to pretend that an Iran armed with legitimacy and billions of dollars and a suspended nuclear file is the same as an Iran dismantled and defanged. Eilu v’eilu. We can hold two truths. We can say thank you for real gifts while naming real dangers. In fact, the Torah demands it. Lo tuchal l’hitalem — you may not look away.

So what does the Torah actually want from us now?

It wants us to remember that we have been here before, in situations far more hopeless than this, and it did not end the way our enemies planned.

It wants us to remember that Haman’s decree was signed and sealed with the king’s own ring, the most legally binding instrument of the Persian empire, and that the Jews of Shushan fasted and prayed and returned to Hashem and the decree was overturned. Not because they figured out the right political strategy. Because lev melachim b’yad Hashem. The king’s heart turned. It can turn again.

It wants us to do our hishtadlut, our human effort, with full seriousness. We do not sit on our hands and wait for miracles. Moshe didn’t. Esther didn’t. David didn’t. The Maccabees fought outnumbered against a superpower and won. Hishtadlus and bitachon are not opposites. They are partners. We lobby, we argue, we build, we fight, we pray = and then we remember who actually runs the story.

It wants us to understand that Hashem’s calculations are not our calculations. We see the signed memorandum. He sees infinity. We see the billions flowing to Tehran. He sees what those billions will actually do, and what will come in their wake. We are not privvy to that. We do not have the full picture. We never do. The brothers who threw Yosef into the pit did not know they were setting in motion the salvation of the Jewish people. Pharaoh who enslaved Israel did not know he was building the conditions for Yetziat Mitzrayim. The architects of our suffering have a remarkably consistent record of inadvertently advancing our redemption.

This is not comfortable theology. It is not meant to be comfortable. It is meant to be true.

And here is perhaps what the Torah wants most from us right now: Chazku v’imtzu –- be strong and courageous. Not because the situation looks good. The situation does not look good. But because the Jewish people has survived every deal ever made over our heads, every empire that decided our fate in a room we weren’t invited to, every king whose heart we could not move. We outlasted Babylon. We outlasted Rome. We outlasted the Third Reich. We will outlast this moment too, though we cannot yet see how.

The Chazon Ish said that faith is not the absence of doubt. It is the decision to act as though the truth is true even when you cannot see it. The truth is that Ein od milvado. There is nothing besides Him. The Iranian regime, the deal, the $300 billion, the suspended nuclear file, the deferred enrichment question, Trump’s Truth Social posts, the signing ceremony in Switzerland,  all of it exists inside a universe that has a Master who has not abandoned His people and has never broken a promise.

That is not whistling in the dark. It is the oldest and most battle-tested Jewish wisdom in existence.

Say thank you for the good. Name the dangers honestly. Do your hishtadlut without illusion. Daven like it matters, because it does. And remember that the heart of kings is in God’s hands.

Even this one.