Finding Courage to Trust

For much of my life, I struggled with the idea of trusting G-d. Then, five years ago, I began to see it everywhere.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, as terrorists dragged Eli Sharabi from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri, he turned and shouted three words to his wife and daughters: “I’ll come back.” 

This small moment in Sharabi’s memoir, Hostage, is easy to miss amid the horror he experienced that day. But as I read, I kept returning to those three words, words I found it hard to imagine saying at such a time. Not “I love you,” not “goodbye.” At a moment when the logical response was despair, Sharabi began to think about the future.  

Sharabi’s memoir became the fastest-selling book in Israel’s history, a testament to the Israeli public’s continuing emotional connection to the hostages and identification with their experience. But Hostage led me in another direction, and to another book—written nearly a thousand years before Sharabi’s—which has also become a (more modest) bestseller recently.

In G-d We Trust?

When your life is shattered, how do you live on?   

Writing to survivors in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Rebbe offered a counterintuitive approach. “Obviously it takes no great effort to understand why your spirits are as they are, after the calamity that has taken place,” he wrote to a young man in 1952. But the man’s depression itself, the Rebbe suggested, was prolonging his suffering. “When one fortifies his trust that G-d will provide reasons to make him happy . . . he thereby draws down [these reasons] from Above.” 

Bitachon, the Hebrew word for trust, carries multiple meanings. In modern Hebrew it means “security,” the physical systems of defense that were overwhelmed in kibbutzim like Be’eri on October 7. In biblical Hebrew it means “reliance.” And in traditional rabbinic literature, bitachon is a spiritual practice, a means of connecting with and drawing closer to G-d through trust. Responding to a “melancholy” rabbi who contemplated giving up his post after the Shoah, the Rebbe recommended the daily study of a medieval text known as Shaar HaBitachon, “The Gate of Trust.”

The Rebbe would recommend Shaar HaBitachon dozens of times over the four decades of his leadership, to people facing everything from marital discord to terminal illness. I first encountered the book—which is actually one chapter extracted from a larger work—as a student in a Chabad seminary in the early 2000s. At the time, I struggled to reconcile its claim that G-d cares and provides for every person with the suffering and inequality I observed in the world. I put the text aside, but couldn’t dismiss it entirely—a feeling lingered that there was something I hadn’t completely understood. And then, five years ago, I began to see it everywhere. 

It started during Covid, when Zoom classes serializing Shaar HaBitachon garnered a global following. Instagram accounts distilled the work’s message into sharable memes; Jewish publishers scrambled to keep up, and in 2021, Kehot Publications Society released a new English translation accompanied by Chasidic commentary, prepared by the publishers of the weekly magazine Chayenu. “It sold out in a matter of weeks,” Chayenu’s CEO Yossi Pels told me. “We couldn’t print fast enough.”

After October 7, Shaar HaBitachon appeared in the hands of soldiers on their way into Gaza; its ideas received shout-outs in Israeli pop music; and Chayenu’s edition was translated into Spanish and Portuguese. An audiobook, along with a new Hebrew and French translation, were completed this spring.

It’s not hard to understand the appeal of faith at a moment of profound uncertainty and upheaval. But as I watched Shaar HaBitachon gain traction with an increasingly diverse audience, I resolved to finally give the text my full attention. I wanted to understand its enduring appeal, and what it might have to teach us about fear, faith, and resilience in a post–October 7 world.    

Duties of the Heart

A rabbinic judge and philosopher in eleventh-century Zaragoza, Spain, Rabbi Bachya ibn Pekuda surveyed the corpus of Jewish scholarship and noted a glaring omission. Much had been written about Judaism’s ritual obligations (what Rabbi Bachya called “duties of the limbs”). The emotional and psychological elements of religious life, however, had been entirely neglected. Writing in the Judeo-Arabic that was the lingua franca of Spanish Jewry at the time, he sought to fill that void with the first comprehensive work of Jewish ethics, Chovot HaLevavot. In English, “Duties of the Heart.” 

The work, which was subsequently translated into Hebrew, became a classic studied across the Jewish world and, in the nineteenth century, a pillar of the Mussar movement. Its ten chapters, or she’arim, “gates,” range from philosophical proofs of Divine existence (the Gate of Unity) to more prosaic reflections on the dangers of procrastination. After establishing the existence of G-d and the nature of human spirituality, in the fourth chapter, Rabbi Bachya considers the relationship between these two entities—a relationship that is based, he writes, on trust.

Shaar HaBitachon defines trust by the feeling it produces. A person who trusts G-d experiences a deep sense of inner peace. G-d is all powerful, orchestrating every detail of an individual’s life. He is also kind, acting reliably for the good of His creations. These two qualities render Him worthy of complete trust. Bitachon extends to every area of life in which people experience vulnerability—Rabbi Bachya pays extra attention to health and livelihood—releasing the one who trusts from both existential loneliness and anxiety about the stock market.

Bitachon raises many questions, some of which Rabbi Bachya addresses directly. If G-d supplies one’s livelihood, for example, why work for a living? More foundationally, if G-d is all powerful and does only good, how can evil exist? Rabbi Bachya acknowledges that G-d’s kindness is not always visible: “The righteous suffer and the wicked prosper.” He provides several explanations, including possible reward in the afterlife, though he admits they are not entirely sufficient.     

Later commentators added their own interpretations of bitachon. Chasidism, which infused even the smallest Jewish rituals with kabbalistic significance, saw in bitachon a means of transcending all the systems of Divine contraction and concealment. The Chabad rebbes explained that trust creates a reciprocal effect: a person who trusts G-d aligns themselves with the highest reality, G-d’s goodness. Therefore they experience G-d’s blessings unhindered. Conversely, fear and anxiety—the opposite of trust—may cause blessings to become obscured, a relationship summarized in a well-known aphorism coined by the third Chabad rebbe: “Think good and it will be good.”

This kind of reciprocity seems too good to be true. Yet nearly everyone I spoke with during my research told me that they had experienced bitachon’s positive effects in real time.

Health and Wealth

In 2010, the Journal of Anxiety Disorders published a study examining the effect of a “spiritually integrated treatment” on reducing anxiety. The treatment was compared to two other options, a placebo and progressive muscle relaxation, a proven method of mitigating anxiety. “The results were incredible,” David Rosmarin, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, told me. The spiritually integrated treatment far outperformed the alternatives. This “treatment,” Rosmarin revealed, was simply the daily study of Shaar HaBitachon. “People really shifted in terms of their level of anxiety, and it was still effective months later.” 

The project has its roots in Rosmarin’s personal experience. As a college student struggling with insomnia, he consulted a rabbi who handed him a photocopied sheaf of papers and told him to read it for ten minutes each night. Within a week of studying Shaar HaBitachon regularly, Rosmarin recalls, he was functioning normally under the same level of stress. The study proved that the method was applicable to a diverse audience: “People got the same benefits irrespective of whether they’re observant or not,” he said.  

Rabbi Bachya identifies the chief benefit of bitachon as “tranquility of the soul.” At a time when 31 percent of US adults will suffer from an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives, this should not be underestimated. But many practitioners of bitachon describe benefits that go beyond psychology. 

In the winter of 2024, Doron Tay was launching a real-estate business, holding down a full-time job, and seeing very little of his young family in the London suburb of Hampstead Garden. A podcast—one of several serializing Shaar HaBitachon—gave Tay a new perspective on his stress. “Bitachon creates a tool for you to apply when you are feeling anxious,” he told me. “It doesn’t mean you have the answer straight away, but you’re allowing space for the answers to come.” 

Tay bought a copy of the book, then several more, and started a Shaar HaBitachon class for young professionals in his neighborhood. Within a few months, his business started to grow.     

Rosmarin suggests that the positive outcomes described by those who practice bitachon may be tied to its primary psychological function—relinquishing control. Practicing trust helps you “get out of your own way,” he said. “If you get into the cockpit, you’re just going to delay the flight. The sooner you get in your seat and fasten your seatbelt, recognize that you’re not in change, the sooner you can take off and enjoy.”

Beyond Bitachon

The evidence for bitachon is persuasive. Yet the questions that troubled me when I first encountered Shaar HaBitachon did not fade with time—on the contrary. G-d may run the world, but when beautiful red-haired children are kidnapped and murdered in cold blood, how can we trust Him? To a post-Holocaust, post–October 7 reader, bitachon can seem like naivete, wishful thinking that ignores the complexity and darkness of real life.      

This criticism has frequently been leveled at bitachon. But trusting G-d does not require ignoring evil or even accepting it, as the Rebbe demonstrated at a moment when darkness seemed triumphant.

On April 11, 1956, a group of Arab Fedayeen terrorists infiltrated the Israeli village of Kfar Chabad, murdering five children and a teacher in their classroom. The traumatized village residents turned to the Rebbe for guidance—and an explanation. But the Rebbe refused to justify the tragedy. “There are some who wish to explain this . . . I have not yet been able to understand it,” he wrote. On another occasion, the Rebbe proclaimed forcefully that he had no wish to understand such horrors. His voice breaking with emotion, he repeated the incredulous demand the Talmud addresses to G-d over the death of innocent scholars: “Is this Torah and this its reward?” 

The Rebbe’s questions for G-d remained unanswered, but he did not allow them to darken his vision. When some of the residents of Kfar Chabad expressed a desire to abandon the village, he encouraged them not only to stay but to build, investing in the future. And, as Rabbi Bachya recommends, he paired bitachon with practical action. Less than a year after the attack, the village perimeter was enclosed with a new security fence.    

The Rebbe’s response to the massacre reached beyond bitachon as defined by Rabbi Bachya, whose vision of tranquility does not include confusion, anger, or grief. And ultimately, I came to understand, bitachon lives and works only in the context of a larger relationship with G-d. Friction and tension are an inseparable part of this relationship, as a human perspective encounters what is, by definition, unknowable. Questions of evil and suffering do present challenges to bitachon, yet the relationship itself transcends them, resting solely on the individual’s desire to be close to G-d. In other words, on faith.  

Thinking Good 

The renewed interest in Shaar HaBitachon parallels broader trends in positive thinking, like manifestation. Indeed, in its most basic form, bitachon is simply an orientation toward reality—the resolution to expect good things.  

Eli Sharabi was not thinking about G-d when he promised his family that he would return from Gaza. As he writes several times in Hostage, he’s not a religious person. Nevertheless it was his resolution to survive that sustained Sharabi through his 491 days in the tunnels, giving him the emotional strength to face torture and starvation while supporting his fellow captives. And, ultimately, the experience led him to something that went beyond the realm of optimism. 

In Sharabi’s first interview after his release, for Israeli TV, he described the comfort he drew from reciting the Shema every day during his captivity. “What, is G-d in the tunnels?” the interviewer asks with thinly veiled skepticism. “There is something,” Sharabi replies with complete sincerity. “There is something watching over you. You find a lot of comfort in that.” 

Yet there were realities his resolve could not fix. Sharabi hit rock bottom not in the tunnels of Gaza, but back home in Israel, standing at the graves of his wife and daughters, who were murdered on October 7. The book, written in the immediate aftermath of his release, cannot capture the full effect of this loss on Sharabi, who has traveled continuously since its publication, first campaigning for the remaining hostages and then sharing his experience to combat misinformation about Israel. In one interview with the BBC, he described an essential aspect of bitachon, a practice that requires constant effort in the face of challenge. “I’m trying to be positive,” Sharabi said when the interviewer asked how he was coping. “I’m working on that.”   

This article appears in the Spring-Summer 2026 issue of Lubavitch International, to subscribe to the magazine, click here.