Hashgacha Pratis

Howling Cat

I have decided to draw the cats. I was searching for an object to sketch in the vicinity of the Student Village when a cat rubbed against my leg. I stiffened and stepped back. The cat curved toward me again, hoping to catch another rub. There was grace in the cat’s peculiar contortion as it reversed direction. I got out my pencil.

Contorting cats are hard to draw. I settled for the lazy ones napping in shaded corners, their heads cushioned by their paws. Sometimes they looked up at me. Concern furrowed their faces. Is he okay? We expect petting, expect gifts of tuna, expect the ones who avoid us. But standing at a close distance and staring? Something must be wrong with him. I finished my first cat-sketching session and rode the elevator up to my apartment. When the elevator doors slid open on the ninth floor, I was startled by a howling cat in the hallway. I rushed past the wailing meows into my apartment, closing the door quickly to ensure the cat wouldn’t slip in after me. A trapped cat didn’t seem worth crossing. What a coincidence, to encounter a howling cat outside my door minutes after sketching his brothers and sisters outside.

I sent a text to my apartment-mates asking for backup. Giuseppe bounded into the kitchen. We brainstormed, Giuseppe grabbed a broom, and I retrieved a piece of pita from the freezer. We slipped into the hallway with our gear. The cat was still there. Giuseppe opened the door to the stairwell, and I threw the pita down the stairs. Giuseppe shooed the cat into the stairwell and shut the door. We had saved the cat from its ninth-floor seclusion. To celebrate, we snacked on pita and hummus.

As I submerged pita in hummus, Sam arrived at the apartment. I relayed the cat saga. He suggested that the cat could be stuck in the stairwell. This possibility had been overlooked. Sam went to investigate. A long while later, he returned with the news: there was no cat. But when he had opened the ground floor door, two little kittens lied in wait: they leapt into the stairwell and scurried up the stairs. Cursing, Sam scurried after them.

Sam and I have come to a mutual understanding that Sam cares more about the cats than I do. He gives them tuna; I do not. But now that I write it down, perhaps our assessment is premature. Sam looks after the cats’ mortal wellbeing; I immortalize the cats in my drawings. Who cares about the cats more, after all?

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Natan

Two weeks ago, I was hosted for Shabbat lunch by a young orthodox American named Natan. We met on the bus. He pushed his baby daughter Naomi in a stroller down the aisle, but suddenly the stroller wouldn’t budge. The aisle was too narrow. I stood up to help Natan lift the stroller over the seats into the open area by the door.

The first thing I noticed about Natan was his youth. It flowed from his voice: he spoke with the bluntness of a child’s curiosity. It was framed in his groomed beard and his big eyes that glowed with untamed energy. His cadence was that of a young white American absorbed in rap culture. All this, and he was indelibly an orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. More specifically, he was an American orthodox Jew attending yeshiva in Jerusalem. Natan’s personality was out of joint. But this unusual array of identities—that striking out-of-jointness— is what made him seem so genuine.

Natan was surprised to hear that I had traveled to Jerusalem on my own. I think he felt responsible for me. We exchanged phone numbers, and later that afternoon, he sent a voice-message: would I like to join him and his family for Shabbat lunch the following day? I said I would be delighted.

The table in Natan’s apartment was set for ten. Natan and his wife had invited a couple of his friends from Yeshiva, who had then invited a couple of their friends. All were men, except for Natan’s wife and the wife of one friend; the other yeshiva students were single. I borrowed a kippa from the cupboard, and we sat down to begin the meal. Sitting to my right was an Israeli named Aaron who had recently finished his service in an IDF paratrooper unit. I said that my brother’s name is Aaron. Ariel, an American sitting across the table, perked up and said that his brother is named Aaron too. This always happens in a room full of Jews, Ariel joked.

To my left was Emmanuel, from Australia. He had moved to Israel a month ago. Emmanuel just finished a two-year conversion to Judaism. His family is Greek-Orthodox. He went to a secular private school in Melbourne. Many of his friends at school were Jewish. He dated Jewish girls—though the girls’ parents did not approve. As he learned more about Judaism, he grew more invested in its practices—particularly the observance of Shabbat. There came a point when all he thought about was Judaism: that’s when he decided to convert. As with Natan, I found the youthfulness of these men foregrounded in their behavior. They were all in their early twenties. They undermined my association between orthodox practice and formal behavior. These men were still discovering themselves anew—it was this feeling of youthfulness that endeared them to me.

Ariel suggested that we each tell a story about a time we experienced hashgacha pratis. This translates to “divine providence.” As I learned from the stories, a moment of hashgacha pratis can be smaller than one might think. The first man, Tobias, began with a story about the mitzvah of tzedakah, which roughly translates to “charity.” According to Jewish Law, Jews have an ethical obligation to donate ten percent of their income to charity. Tobias found it difficult to fulfil this mitzvah. “Ten percent is a lot,” he said, “and it’s hard to part ways with money that I’ve earned.” Nevertheless, he begrudgingly donated ten percent to charity. On the same day he made his donation, he washed his laundry. When he unloaded the dryer, he found twice the amount of money he had donated buried in his clothes. Those around the table were incredulous. God was looking out for him, they said.

Another man spoke about the time he attended a reform Jewish wedding in San Diego. He was friends with both the bride and the groom. But he was still quite nervous about attending their wedding. He intended to leave after the Chuppah to avoid the co-ed dancing and the non-kosher food. After driving all the way from San Francisco, he stayed for the Chuppah and only the Chuppah. He left the wedding hungry. Outside the venue, he passed by a large Persian Jewish family. “Mazel Tov!” they said. At first, he thought they had misrecognized him as the groom. Then he realized they were lauding his early exit. They invited him back to their home, where he indulged in a kosher meal. God was looking out for him, he said.

Aaron told a story about his time in an IDF border patrol unit near the city of Ascalon. It was nearly sundown, and Aaron had been on his shift for almost eight hours. Fatigue was setting in. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a man approaching on the Gazan side of the fence. The man unslung a backpack from his shoulders and dropped it casually on the ground. The backpack was ten meters from where Aaron stood. Aaron asked a fellow soldier for advice. The soldier told him it was probably nothing: wait twenty minutes and see if the man retrieves his bag. Aaron waited. The man did not return. He decided to report the backpack to his superiors, who promptly called in a bomb squad. By the time the squad arrived, all the guards were awake. This was an occasion not worth missing. The bomb squad directed their robot towards the backpack. The robot approached the pack and gently unzipped the zipper. We leaned forward in our seats around the table. “What was inside!?” Ariel nearly shouted. “It was a bomb,” Aaron replied, as if he was making a confession. We gasped, but Aaron continued on with his story. The robot now pushed the backpack with the bomb several miles into uninhabited Gazan territory. After it was positioned at a safe distance, the bomb was detonated. Aaron could feel the vibrations from where he stood several miles away. God was looking out for him.

Gosh—what story would I share? Hashgacha pratis isn’t tied to traditional notions of grandness (I didn’t have a bomb-detonation experience to share anyways), but in what small moment of my life was God looking out for me? When did fate reveal itself?

I did share a story, and the story hushed the room. It was a hit. I wrote it down for this blog. However, when I had finished writing, I realized that I could not share it—not here. Writing it on paper felt like a sacrilege. Some stories live only in the ephemeral texture of voice.  

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Willow

You’ve confronted the cat, and you’ve met Natan. There’s one final character in this story. I recognized Willow on our first day of ulpan class. I had seen their picture on the Fulbright website. They are an ETA scholar like me. We had not planned to take the same ulpan before our fellowships, yet here we were. Willow is difficult to pin down. My first impression was of something subdued, of the streak of teal lighting their hair, of a whimsical spirit crouching in wait. I did not expect them to be sentimental, but Willow later confessed—with the shrug of a guilty pleasure—that sentimentality floods their creative writing. Though Willow is a poet—and we share many literary interests—they are first and foremost a dancer. Finally, it is worth noting Sam’s observation that Willow looks like the singer Grimes. Like many things, this is only half true.

Last week, Willow and I adventured into the Yemin Moshe neighborhood, home to Montefiore’s windmill. In the 1850s, Moses Montefiore founded this neighborhood outside the Ottoman walls of the Old City. It was the beginning of Jerusalem’s modern expansion. Yemin Moshe was well preserved. We wandered the quaint laneways, dragging our hands against the exquisitely textured walls. All was quiet except for a few Orthodox families crisscrossing the streets. Each family was conducting a photoshoot of their children, who posed against the frozen 1850s background. We probably interrupted a few photoshoots that afternoon.

During our walk, I told Willow about my experience at Natan’s apartment, and I explained the term hashgacha pratis. We decided that hashgacha pratis communicates the importance of viewing life not as a collection of chance occurrences but as a series of fateful encounters. Our lives have narratives, and these narratives are the bases for our identities. Often times, Willow observed, people are comfortable establishing narratives on their social media profiles—that is, placing narratives onto their pasts—but when secular people consider the future, the specter of chance usually reigns supreme in their minds. We agreed that an indecisiveness pervades our generation. I think it is rooted in a reluctance to view the paths we will take as fated trajectories, inherently full of meaning.

I am reminded of an article written by two research professors at Furman University. The professors write:

…the reigning model of liberal education — opening doors without helping us think about what lies beyond them — prevails because it reprises a successful modern formula. Agnosticism about human purposes, combined with the endless increase of means and opportunities, has proved to be a powerful organizing principle for our political and economic life. It has helped create the remarkable peace, prosperity and liberty we have enjoyed for much of the modern age. Modern liberty and modern anxiety are, however, two fruits of the same tree. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted long ago, people who have freedom and plenty but lack the art of choosing will be “restless in the midst of their prosperity.” 

What do people like Willow and I do in the face of nearly limitless opportunity? How do we avoid paralysis? I think we must embrace the spirit of hashgacha pratis. Every moment is electric with some version of divine providence. The contortions of our lives are graceful because they are endlessly meaningful—every last twist and turn. The narrative is not created; it is found: found howling behind the door, found on a bus, found wherever our attention carries us.

I would like to end with a Frederick Buechner passage. Buechner recently passed away, and David Brooks eulogizes him in a recent column. Buechner writes:

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and the pain of it no less than the excitement and the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

August 21, 2022