בטחון : Trust, also confidence, positivity, reliance, safeness; security, secureness;
Emunah [אֱמוּנָה]: A knowing, deep in the soul, that there is only ONE; One God, One Source of Good...and that Essence of Good loves you...you are created in God's Image.
Bitachon: The confidence that emerges when Emunah is challenged by circumstances. Our ability to have Bitachon is to be able to draw on this middah when real life situations come up that challenge us. Bitachon is the real-life application of having Emunah. ~Ruth Schapira
Summary
The Torah comes in two forms: written and engraved. On the last day of his life, Moses inscribed the Torah on parchment scrolls. But this written Torah was preceded by an engraved Torah: the divine law was first given to us encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, which were etched by the hand of G‑d in two tablets of stone.
When something is written, the substance of the letters that express it—the ink—remains a separate entity from the substance upon which they have been set—the parchment. On the other hand, letters engraved in stone are forged in it: the words are stone and the stone is words.
By the same token, there is an aspect of Torah that is “inked” on our soul: we understand it, our emotions are roused by it; it becomes our “lifestyle” or even our “personality”; but it remains something additional to ourselves. But there is a dimension of Torah that is chok, engraved in our being. There is a dimension of Torah which expresses a bond with G‑d that is of the very essence of the Jewish soul. ~ Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi
(טז) וְהַ֨לֻּחֹ֔ת מַעֲשֵׂ֥ה אֱלֹהִ֖ים הֵ֑מָּה וְהַמִּכְתָּ֗ב מִכְתַּ֤ב אֱלֹהִים֙ ה֔וּא חָר֖וּת עַל־הַלֻּחֹֽת׃
(16) The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised upon the tablets.
(ה) בְּטַ֣ח אֶל־יְ֭הֹוָה בְּכׇל־לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְאֶל־בִּ֥֝ינָתְךָ֗ אַל־תִּשָּׁעֵֽן׃
(5) Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
And do not rely on your own understanding.
All that is true, and did, and will, come to pass. When we fulfill all the commandments of the Torah, all the good things of this world will come to us; and when we transgress them, the evils mentioned in the Torah will happen to us. Nevertheless, those good things are not the ultimate reward of the mitzvot, nor are those evils the ultimate punishment for transgressing them.
The explanation of the matter is thus: G‑d gave us this Torah; it is a tree of life, and whoever observes all that is written in it and knows it with a complete knowledge merits thereby the life of the world to come. . . . Yet G‑d also promised us in the Torah that if we observe it with joy . . . He will remove from us all things that may prevent us from fulfilling it, such as illness, war, hunger, and the like, and He will bestow upon us all blessings that bolster our hand to observe the Torah, such as abundant food, peace, and much gold and silver, in order that we should not need to preoccupy ourselves all our days with our material needs, but be free to learn the wisdom and observe the commandments by which we shall merit the life of the world to come . . . Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 9:1
By the same token, we are employed by G‑d to develop and elevate His world through the performing of mitzvot. The actual reward for our work will come later, in the world to come, after our task is completed; but G‑d is also “obligated” to allow us to enjoy the material blessings of this world, which is the object of our toil. ~The Lubavitcher Rebbe
"Internalizing the attribute of bitachon [trust in God] leads to two benefits, First, he who trusts in God is freed from all the troubles of the world. He is spared the emotional fragmentation caused by overly intense involvement in too many worldly concerns. He is also saved from wearing himself out, body and soul…
Second, he has acquired the habit of trust, a path and a course in life. The direction that one has in this world is even more important than the benefits to which it leads. The advantages gained through bitachon are only indicators of its supreme value and by no means its only measure."
....the beginning of the consequences [curses]...
A third approach sees the suffering associated with sin as the byproduct of G‑d’s rehabilitation of the iniquitous soul. The analogy is the removal of an infective splinter from a person’s body: the pain that is experienced is not a “punishment” as such for the person’s carelessness, but an inevitable part of the healing process itself. The fact that a foreign body has become embedded in living flesh and has caused its decay makes its removal a painful experience. By the same token, when something alien to the soul’s bond with G‑d has become embedded within it, the extraction of this alien body, and the healing of the bond, is experienced as painful to both body and soul. www.chabad.org. [bechukotai in depth]
The most terrible of punishments is for G‑d to indulge the sinner this vanity. For G‑d to say: “All right, have it your way; what happens to you is of no significance”—for G‑d to act toward him as if He really does not care what happens to him. ~The Chassidic Masters
אם בחקותי תלכו ואת מצותי תשמרו ועשיתם אותם ונתתי גשמיכם בעתם ונתנה הארץ יבולה והשיג לכם דיש וגו' בזאת הפרשה יש ספקות:
הספק הא' שנראה מזה ששכר המצות הוא בעולם הזה ואינו כן שהעולם הזה הבל וריק וכמו שאומר בספר קהלת ואין ראוי שהמצות שהם קדושות ורמות גדולות ובצורות בשמים יהיה השכר בעולם ההבל שהיום כאן ומחר בקבר:
... התשובה לראשונה שהקב"ה רצה להוליך עם ישראל הדרך שהאב מוליך עם בנו לשיעסוק בתורה כשהוא קטן אומר לו לך לבית המלמד ואתן לך מן הרמונים ומן התאנים ואחר שאינו כל כך קטן אומר לו שילך ללמוד ואתן לך זהוב א' ואח"כ אומר לו לך ללמוד ואתן לך מלבוש כשהוא גדול אומר לך ללמוד ותירש עולם הבא ואח"כ אומר לו האמת לך ללמוד בעבור מעלת הקב"ה שברא העולם ועשה לנו את הנפש הזאת לא תכלית שום שכר וכל זה שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה וכן הקב"ה אמר בתחלה אם בחקותי תלכו ואת מצותי תשמרו אתן לכם לחם ופירות גשמיכם בעתם ונתנה הארץ יבולה ועץ השדה יתן פריו ואח"כ אמר ונתתי שלום בארץ ושכבתם ואין מחריד ואח"כ ורדפתם את אויביכם ובסוף אמר להם האמת ונתתי משכני בתוככם והתהלכתי בתוככם אטייל עמכם בגן עדן ואמר עוד האמת והייתי לכם לאלקים בעבור מעלתי ועצמותי ואתם תהיו לי לעם שעבדי המלך ראוי למות בעבודתו בעבור מעלת המלך עצמו וזה הדרך עצמו הוליך בסדר עקב תשמעון ולזה אמר שם וידעת עם לבבך כי כאשר ייסר איש את בנו ה׳ אלקיך מיסרך הכוונה זה שאמרתי הוא שהוליך עמהם בברכות הדרך שהאב מוליך עם בנו ואמר אם בחקותי לומר החוקים אין אדם עושה אותם בעבורם שהרי אין להם טעם אלא בעבור הקב"ה שמצוה אותם אבל המצות עושה אותם האדם בעבור הקב"ה המצוה ובעבור המצוה בעצמה שהרי יש לה טעם ולז"א ואת מצותי תשמרו בעבורי ועשיתם אותם בעבור המצות בעצמם וזהו טעם ועשיתם אותם אחר אמרו ואת מצותי תשמרו עוד אמר תשמרו כמו ואביו שמר את הדבר שצריך להמתין האדם למצוה ולא המצוה לאדם שזריזין מקדימין למצות וזהו שאמר שומר מצוה לא ידע דבר רע וכמו שארז"ל אעירה שחר אני מעורר השחר ואין השחר מעורר לי. ...
If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit. Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and your vintage shall overtake the sowing etc (Lev. 26:3) - and there are questions: First, it appears that there is repayment for mitzvot in this world, and this isn't so, since this world is breath and emptiness, as explained in the Book of Ecclesiastes. And the mitzvot are holy and exalted, with their form in heaven, how could it be that the reward is in this world, [we are] one day here and the next in the grave? ... The answer to the first question is that the Holy Blessed One wanted to guide the people of Israel the same way a parent guides their child to connect with Torah. When the child is young, the parent says 'go to the house of the teacher, and I will give you pomegranates and figs. After, when the child is not so small, the parent says 'go study, and I will give you a coin'. And after that, 'go study and I will give you a nice outfit'. After he is older, the parent says 'go study and you will inherit the world to come'. And after that the parent says the truth: 'go study to repay the Holy Blessed One Who created the world, and made our souls, not because of any reward. And all this is because "what is done for an external motive eventually is done for its own sake". And so too, the Holy Blessed One says at the beginning "if you walk on My laws, and if you observe My mitzvot, I will give you bread and fruit, your rains in their proper time, and the land will give its produce, and the tree of the field will give its fruits, and after that the text said "and I will give you peace in the land and you will lay down without trouble", and after that "and you will pursue your enemies". And after that God told them the truth "I will set My abode among you, and I will walk among you", I will stroll with you in Gan Eden, and told them more truth: "I will be God for you, and you will be a people to Me". And it is appropriate for a servant to die while serving the king, due to the greatness of the king. And this same way appears in the portion of Ekev, and there it is said "You are to know in your heart that just as a person disciplines their child, Ad-nai your God disciplines you" (Deut. 8:5). The intention is what I explained, that God guides us as a parent blesses and guides their child. And this, that the Text said "if, in My chukim" - a chok is something that a person does not for themselves, after all, there is no reasoning behind a chok, the only reasoning is the commandment of God, that commands them. But mitzvot are done due to the command of God, but also due to the mitzvah itself, as the mitzvot have a reasoning, and this is the reason for "and you will do them", and also "you will keep them" just as "and his father kept the thing" (Gen. 37:11). A person needs to wait for the mitzvah, and not the mitzvah should wait for the person, since "the vigilant are early for [doing] mitzvot" (Pesachim 4a). And this is also "One who keeps the commandment shall know no evil thing" (Eccl. 8:5, Shabbat 63a), and also what our rabbis of blessed memory said "I wake up the dawn and the dawn does not wake me up" (Bamidbar Rabbah 15:16, Brachot 3b).
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat :
Some of us may struggle with the notion of a vengeful God Who would repay us for breaking faith in these ways. (That's certainly not my God-concept.) But what happens if we read the verse not prescriptively but descriptively? In other words: this isn't about what God will "do to us" if we turn away from the mitzvot. This is about the natural consequences of choosing to turn away from a path of holiness.
Does the idea of serving make us uncomfortable? Maybe we want to say, I'm nobody's servant -- I live for my own self! But in Torah's frame, that's an impossibility. Once we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and God brought us out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm: not so that we could be self-sufficient and serve our own needs, but so that we could enter into covenant with God and serve the Holy One.
Everyone serves something. That's a fact of human life. The question is what we will choose to serve, and how.
In Torah's understanding, either we can dedicate our lives to serving the Holy One of Blessing -- through the practice of mitzvot both ritual and ethical; through feeding the hungry and protecting the vulnerable; through cultivating gratitude for life's abundance; through working to rebuild and repair the world; through the work of teshuvah, turning ourselves around -- or we can turn our backs on all of that.
And if we turn our backs on all of that, says Torah, we will find ourselves serving a master who is cruel and uncaring. Maybe that master will be overwork. Maybe that master will be a political system that mistreats the immigrant and the refugee. Maybe that master will be whatever we use to numb ourselves to the brokenness around and within us.
In Torah's stark framing, either we can serve God or we can serve something else, and the inevitable fruits of serving something else will be disconnection and lack and facing down a slew of internal enemies.