In the immediate wake of October 7, 2023, the instinct of many Jewish educators worldwide was clear: we needed to teach hope. Many of us clung to the timeless words of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “It is not too much to say that Jews kept hope alive, and hope kept the Jewish people alive.” Hope was our life-support system and one of the messages of every piece of Torah I subsequently taught.

But as the months bled into years, a collective realization quietly settled over our classrooms. In the long corridors of Jewish history, when we find ourselves living through a prolonged period of deep existential uncertainty without a clear endpoint, hope alone is not enough. Hope looks toward a better tomorrow; it is future-oriented. But what do we do with our students today, while the horizon remains clouded?

I found myself searching for a more robust theological language with which to engage my high school students, a language that could sustain them through ongoing historical trauma without shattering their religious identities. That search led me back to a foundational Jewish concept that many in our community strangely avoid, but which is completely intrinsic to our tradition: bitahon.

For some modern day school students and educators, bitahon carries a certain sectarian baggage, coding as “Haredi.” These students associate it with a simplistic, naive optimism or a total withdrawal from the world. I felt that if I wanted to build a resilient generation capable of thriving under adverse conditions, then I must rescue bitahon from these caricatures. I understood that we needed to challenge our communal preconceived notions and think deeply about how we teach the mechanics of trust in the Divine to the next generation. This past year my colleagues and I elevated bitahon as our central ”theme of the year,” making it the anchor for all student programming and informal learning.

1. The Typology of Faith: Cognitive vs. Affective

To teach bitahon, we needed to first define it. In his seminal work Faith and Doubt, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm provides a critical taxonomy that served as the starting point for the classroom. He distinguishes between two primary dimensions of religious conviction:

The first, that of acknowledgment, is a cognitive type of faith, in which I intellectually accept certain propositions as true—such as the existence and unity of God…This is a ”belief-that” type of faith—that God exists, that He is One, that He is incorporeal. The content of this faith is noetic; its mode is intellectual. The second type, that of trust, is not ”belief-that” but ”belief-in.” Regardless of the thoughts I entertain about God…I believe in Him: I trust and esteem Him. This is the area not of propositions but of relationship.

Teaching cognitive faith (belief-that) fits neatly within the standard academic day school curriculum. We can map out Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith, analyze the critique of the Raavad, and assess a student’s comprehension via an exam. But cognitive faith is highly cerebral.

The real educational frontier is what Rabbi Lamm calls affective faith (belief-in), which he explicitly maps onto the Hebrew word bitahon:

The Hebrew word bitahon may best describe affective faith: the desire for, reliance on and support in the מִבטָח (mivtah – confidence), the fortress of strength and succor that God is and provides for man. It involves a quest for peace, for tranquility, and above all, for meaning.

Affective faith is personal, emotional, and relational. It bespeaks a sense of reliance, dependence, and intimacy. But how do we teach a relationship? In our health and guidance curricula, we spend hours teaching students about healthy human relationships, but we rarely apply that same pedagogical rigor to their relationship with God.

To be completely honest, I do not have a simple answer to this question; it is a massive, ongoing educational struggle that we are actively trying to figure out in real-time. Yet, even without a flawless blueprint, we cannot afford to let that stop us from doing something productive. To begin bridging this gap, we invited students to consider the diverse ways our tradition has conceptualized this relationship throughout Jewish history.

2. Three Theological Models of Bitahon

When teaching bitahon to intellectually sophisticated teenagers, we were careful to avoid presenting it as a monolith or neat package wrapped with a bow. By introducing them to a spectrum of classical text models—with relative benefits and deficits of each—we gave them a mature vocabulary to navigate their own spiritual lives.

Model A: Radical Passivity

In his Mussar classic Madregat HaAdam, Rav Yosef Yozel Horwitz (known colloquially as the “Alter of Novardok”) presents a shocking, radical approach to trust:

If God fearing people wish to achieve true perfection, the correct way to do this is to trust in God without any hishtadlut [human effort]. They need not exert themselves with many efforts…Rather, God will provide them with their portion without any efforts on their part…A person must trust in God without hishtadlut, so he doesn’t attribute his success to his own abilities…One who does too much hishtadlut falls into the category of those who deny God’s existence.

His core idea is zero human effort. For the Alter of Novardok, the stake is absolute spiritual purity and freedom from material anxiety.

• What works: Intellectually, it is ruthlessly consistent. Emotionally, it provides incredible psychological armor. If you outsource 100% of your security to God, anxiety disappears; even wild animals or financial ruin cannot shake you.
• The challenge: It borders on psychological dissociation and leaves no room for the natural human instincts of self-preservation.
• The classroom resonance: This model is fundamentally at odds with the modern day school ethos, which heavily values hishtadlut (getting the college degree, buying insurance, investing in security systems). Yet, reading it forces our students into a vital moment of self-reflection: Has our obsession with financial planning and material security caused us to practice a functional atheism, completely crowding God out of our day-to-day consciousness?

Model B: The All-Encompassing Providence

In his work Emunah Uvitahon, Rav Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz (known colloquially as the “Hazon Ish”) forcefully corrects a pervasive misunderstanding:

An ancient error has become entrenched regarding the concept of bitahon. This error is the notion that one is obligated to believe—whenever faced with an uncertain future—that ”the good” [the desired outcome] will certainly occur, and that if one is doubtful or fears that the outcome will not be “good,” he lacks trust… This understanding is incorrect… Rather, the essence of bitahon is the conviction that there is no such thing as “chance” in the world. Everything that happens under the sun is by decree from Him.

His core idea is that bitahon is not certainty about what will happen, but certainty that whatever happens is governed by Divine providence. For the Hazon Ish, the stake is building a faith resilient enough to endure uncertainty and tragedy.

• What works: The Hazon Ish rescues faith from becoming a fragile fairy tale. He builds a faith that can actually survive suffering. If bitahon means a cosmic guarantee of physical safety, then the first unanswered prayer or national tragedy will instantly destroy a student’s theology.
• The challenge: It demands immense intellectual and emotional stamina. It offers no immediate soothing promises that “everything will turn out fine,” which can feel emotionally heavy during times of active grief.
• The classroom resonance: This speaks directly to the contemporary Jewish condition. We cannot look at the rise of global antisemitism and naively tell our students, “Don’t worry, nothing bad will happen.” The Hazon Ish gives us a language to say: We are doing our hishtadlut, but we refuse to believe that we are at the mercy of blind history or random luck. God is in the script, even when the scene is dark.

Model C: The Natural Order and Causality

Writing in HaMaspik LeOvdei Hashem, the Maimonides’s son, R. Avraham, grounds trust firmly in physical reality: “It is incumbent upon you to know that Hashem created the world and set it up based on [a system of] cause and effect.”

His core idea is that bitahon requires embracing the natural order that God created, rather than bypassing it. For R. Avraham ben HaRambam, the stake is integrating human effort into a God-centered worldview without allowing it to eclipse Divine agency.

• What works: This Maimonidean approach perfectly bridges science, human intelligence, and theology. It reframes human effort not as a lack of faith, but as a religious mandate to operate—to “cause”—within the natural order that God designed.
• The challenge: It can feel spiritually dry. If everything is just cause and effect, it can easily slide into a functional deism, whereby God winds up the clock of nature and steps back as the gears turn on their own, leaving us feeling profoundly alone inside the machine.
• The classroom resonance: This is the native language of our day school communities. We excel at cause-and-effect: political advocacy, medical breakthroughs, strategic planning. But Rav Avraham ben HaRambam serves as an essential warning: Use cause and effect, but remember that God is the ultimate Cause behind all intermediate effects. Do not make an idol out of your own efforts.

3. Optimism vs. Steadfastness: The Two Types of Trust

As an educator in a Modern Orthodox High School, I began to search for a text that speaks directly and authentically to our specific community’s ethos. We needed a model that values intellectual honesty and proactive worldly engagement yet refuses to compromise on absolute spiritual devotion. We find that exact voice in the Torah of the late Rav Aharon Lichtenstein who beautifully mapped these internal postures onto the text of Psalms. Rav Lichtenstein argues that Judaism recognizes two distinct tracks of bitahon:

The first track is “optimism,” capturing the energy of Psalms 118: “In distress I called on God… God is on my side, I have no fear; what can mortals do to me?” As Rav Lichtenstein writes:

According to the first approach, trust is expressed by the certainty that God stands at your side and will assist you… This approach is fundamentally optimistic, saturated with faith and with hopeful expectation for the future… In short, this approach is expressed in the familiar formula, “With God’s help, everything will be all right.”

The second track, however, is “steadfastness,” best captured by the raw existential agony of Psalms 13: “How long, O Eternal One; will You ignore me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me?… But I trust in Your faithfulness; my heart will exult in Your deliverance.” Notice the shift. King David is crying out from the depths of Divine abandonment, yet he maintains his trust. Rav Lichtenstein explains:

This [second] approach has a completely different meaning. It does not attempt to scatter the clouds of misfortune, try to raise expectations, or strive to whitewash a dark future. It does not claim that “It will all work out for the best”…On the contrary, it expresses a steadfast commitment—even if the outcome will be bad, we will remain reliant on and connected to God. We will remain faithful until the end and shall not exchange our trust in God for dependence on man. This approach does not claim that God will remain at our side; rather, it asks us to remain at His side.

Herein lies our primary educational challenge: How do we hold onto the vital energy of hopeful optimism without falling prey to a brittle, transactional faith that shatters under the weight of real-world suffering? As Rabbi Harold Kushner famously observed in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People:

No one ever promised us a life free from pain and disappointment. The most anyone promised us was that we would not be alone in our pain, and that we would be able to draw upon a source outside ourselves for the strength and courage we would need to survive life’s tragedies.

True bitahon is not a transaction; it is a relationship that promises presence, not immunity.

4. Deconstructing the Unconscious Reflexes of the Day School Culture

Before we were able to begin building this deeper model of bitahon, we needed to first help our students name and unlearn any damaging cultural and religious “neuropathways” that they may have unconsciously absorbed along the way. In a highly competitive, achievement-oriented school environment; some students become conditioned on a series of toxic equations:

• Achievement = Worth: My value as a person is entirely tied to my output and grades.
• Control = Safety: If I plan perfectly and look far enough ahead, I can eliminate risk.
• More Effort = More Guarantee: Doubling the hishtadlut ensures the specific outcome I want.

When life gets stressful or global events feel terrifying, some activate an automated reflex to over-activate—to tighten, spiral, panic, or completely emotionally detach. Worse, they translate this transactional secular anxiety into their spiritual lives, coming to believe that if they just pray or recite Tehillim with enough intensity or run enough tzedakah campaigns, God is contractually obligated to deliver the exact outcome they demand.

To break these habits of the mind and heart, our understanding of faith education consciously pivoted away from these transactional defaults. We focused on three core paradigm shifts: First, changing how students view their own efforts, moving them from the frantic question of, “How much should I act to secure the outcome?” to the deeper, character-driven question of, “Who am I being while I am exerting efforts in a world that is ultimately unpredictable?” Second, adjusting their expectations around suffering, shifting their focus away from a desperate, “How do we insulate ourselves from vulnerability?” and toward a courageous, “How do we build the spiritual capacity to live meaningfully with it?” Finally, and most fundamentally, altering how they view their connection to the Divine. We guided them to step away from the resentful cry of, “Why is God letting this happen to me?” and step into the relational comfort of asking, “How do I hold God’s hand while this is happening?” Bitahon is a muscle. They cannot wake up one morning in the middle of a life crisis and suddenly run a spiritual marathon. It must be conditioned through deliberate pedagogical frameworks that allow students to practice vulnerability and tolerate uncertainty in real-time.

5. From Theory to Classroom: The Machshevet Yisrael Blueprint

How did we move these heavy, existential concepts from abstract theory into the daily lives of our students? Since we want our students to graduate with a faith that can withstand the tremors of modern history, we actively intervened in their theological development. We believe that high school students should no longer hold onto an image of God that the 20th-century French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas aptly called a “kindergarten deity,” a simplistic, black-and-white caricature that inevitably shatters upon first contact with real-world suffering. Instead, we want our students to develop nuance, complexity, and structural maturity in their relationship with God. Our primary vehicle for this transformation is our mandatory 11th-grade Machshevet Yisrael curriculum. The course is founded upon the fundamental belief that exposing students to challenging theological questions within a supportive, reflective, and religiously committed environment will ultimately deepen their faith, their practice, and their overall religious lives.

The year-long curriculum is divided into three distinct units, each accompanied by a dedicated sourcebook containing texts spanning from Tanakh to contemporary thought. We begin by anchoring students in the emotional, intuitive, and relationship-based expressions of faith, studying thinkers like Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rav Shagar to explore what it actually means to be in a relationship with God, and how to authentically hold questions and doubt. In the second unit, students confront the classic tensions of Divine omniscience versus human free will, mapping out exactly what is at stake in a deterministic world. It is here that we lean into the age-old question of tzaddik vera lo (the suffering righteous), tracing the conversation from Job through modern philosophy. Finally, our third unit does a deep dive into Jewish ethics, challenging students to consider the very purpose of mitzvot, how to navigate a commandment that conflicts with one’s personal moral intuition, and what it means to live a life lifnim mishurat hadin (beyond the letter of the law).

To make this material stick, the course is designed to be both informative and formative: students encounter the rich world of Jewish thought while also being given the space to reflect, develop their own perspectives, and grow as religious thinkers. Through a “toolbox approach” to life’s biggest questions, we cultivate theological humility, thoughtful engagement with diverse viewpoints, and a classroom culture that serves as both a safe space for difficult questions and a profound act of Talmud Torah.

Conclusion: Walking Through the Valley

In a world where our students are breathing in an atmosphere of shifting global realities, geopolitical instability, and a terrifying resurgence of global antisemitism, a superficial, “everything-will-be-fine” theology is not only ineffective, it is tone deaf. It is also neither realistic nor healthy—emotionally or spiritually—to allow them to grow into a false sense that they can control every outcome. Since we want to build an extraordinarily resilient generation capable of thriving under adverse conditions, we dared not offer them a religion of false safety and transactional guarantees.

Through intentional, year-long learning inside the classroom, and by elevating bitahon as our experiential anchor outside of it, we worked to teach our students how to live meaningfully within human vulnerability. We helped them to understand that true trust is not the absence of fear, but the presence of a relationship. We strove to empower them to stand on the precipice of an uncertain world, look into an unknown future, and find the quiet confidence to say, “I do not know how this chapter of history will end. I do not know what tomorrow brings. But I trust in the relationship. God is with me in the valley, and I am not alone.”