Divine Providence – Questions and answers
Chassidic thought focuses very much on events which happen by Divine Providence, what does this constitute in simple terms?
Basic Jewish belief is that the world was created by the Creator ‘something from nothing.’ The first Rebbe of Lubavitch, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, explains in the Tanya (basic text of Chassidic thought), in the section ‘Gateway to Unification and Belief’, that the process of creation is not a one-time act, but an ongoing one. At every moment the Creator is recreating all the creations from the start – in a manner of ‘something from nothing’ (Yesh miAyin). As we say in our daily prayers: “Who in His goodness renews every day the original act of creation.”
Since the Creator invests all His powers (as it were) in creating the creations in a manner of ‘something from nothing’ at the current moment, it is clear that He relates to them and supervises them, and that everything that happens to them is not incidental, but happens because the Creator in His goodness is currently creating it.
And if we say (G d forbid) that things happen by coincidence and not by Divine Providence, it means that creations can exist in some way other than through the Creator, who creates them ‘something from nothing’.
As the Rebbe writes in the “Yom Yom” (on the 29th of Sivan,): “The service of man according to the teachings of Chassidut, is to train himself to observe the Divine Providence, how G d in His goodness renews the world and the creations every moment in Divine Providence, and this and only this (accounts for) the existence and vitality of created beings.
In other words, providence is relationship. The Creator relates to the created being by the very fact of giving him existence.