Why we can’t use ’emuna’ as an excuse to do nothing

It’s taken me years and years, to realise that real emuna, Breslov emuna, was never meant to be used as a ‘crutch’, to enable a person to duck taking responsibility for themselves, and their actions, and their bad middot.

At this stage, I think there is an arc that has to be traced, that sort of has to flow through ‘fake emuna’, in order to get to the real deal, after a huge amount of work on the real, underlying bad middot and lack of emuna, that are making most of our problems for us.

It says that a fool perverts their own way, and then blames Hashem for their issues.

I see that happening all over the place.

I’ve experienced that happening to me, myself, in a bunch of different ways. And that’s what I want to discuss a bit here, to open the subject up.

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A few years ago, me and my husband both decided that doing six hours of hitbodedut every day was the ideal solution, to the problem of him hating his job, and especially, the yucky bunch of narcs that had gathered around him.

I’ve written a lot about this experience elsewhere, from different angles. To sum up most of where I’d got to, it boiled down to this:

• Nobody can expect, or trust, someone else to make basic decisions for them on how to run their life – not even the Gadol HaDor.
• We have free choice, and it’s assur to try and give that free choice away to anyone else.
• Everything that happens to us is 100% deserved – so we can’t ‘blame’ the sticks God uses to beat us and get our attention. But, we can sure validate ourselves that these ‘sticks’ are yucky, and doing horrible things to us. Which leads to the next point:
• We have to take responsibility for trying to protect ourselves, care for ourselves, and improving our own situation in life. We have to do our basic histhadlut, and anything else is fake emuna, a way of trying to use spirituality to run away from the work God actually put in the world to do.
• And at the same time – everything is only a present from God. The two are connected, but our effort is not what solves the problem. We work for free, and we also eat for free. (This is one of Rabbenu’s famous stories).

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So, what’s the update now?

The update now, is that the more I’ve been recognising ‘C-PTSD’ symptoms, and particularly something called ‘avoidance’,  the more I see how they can segue perfectly in to developing a fake emuna approach to life.

And also, a “I’m always the permanent victim’ approach to life.

Because victims don’t need to take responsibility for the mess their life is in, right? They don’t need to acknowledge that their own behaviour and bad middot is what is keeping them ‘stuck’ in a very narrow space, keeping people away, keeping them miserable and unhappy.

Permanent victims always blame everyone else for the problems they have, and also – they blame God.

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I understand this, I really do.

My life has also not been a bed of roses for a whole bunch of reasons, and I also was lacking a lot of basic stuff, growing up, not just financially, but in a bunch of other ways, too.

For years and years, until I hit Rabbenu and Breslov, I simply couldn’t find a way out from under all the garbage I’d inherited, literally and figuratively.

Regular, daily hitbodedut was the ladder leading out of the routine depressions that could drag me down to the bottom of the world, and dump me there for months at a time.

But, the additional work was to figure out who and what is really causing these depressions, in the first place?

That was my bit of the equation to solve, with God’s help – and it couldn’t be skipped, or magicked away with ‘fake emuna’, and hakol le tova.

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Let’s fast-forward to 2026, when recently, my husband found himself experiencing the same sort of ‘down’ he’s gone through before at work, when clients turn out to be yucky people who don’t want to pay him for work he’s already done.

This is the third time we’ve had this happen.

The first time, we lost our big house in Modiin, because we couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments, when my husband’s main client ‘went bankrupt’, and couldn’t pay him for six months’ work of work.

That first time, it was a huge shock to the system – but it got my husband into a serious learning schedule for the first time ever, as he tried to recover and find a different job that would let him also learn a few hours in the morning.

It took many months – but God helped us, and that happened.

We bought a new house, in what was then cheap Gush Etzion. My mortgage was grushim. Then – my kids started being horribly bullied in school, we ended up being socially ostracised for being too ‘frum’, and especially, too ‘Breslov’, so then we moved again, to a yishuv close to Ashdod.

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We bought another, more expensive house, that I hated right from the start, despite how ‘new’ and big it was.

My husband hit some more problems with ‘narcs at work’, and so decided to go self-employed. That was working fantastically – until his dad died unexpectedly, which sent him into a tailspin where he just wanted to run away from ‘the world’ again, and especially, all the crazy people inhabiting it.

This, we now know, is called ‘avoidance’. It’s a key pattern of people who have C-PTSD, who have been very hurt by the people closest to them.

But back then, it just looked like doing six hours of hitbodedut every day, instead of working, was the answer to our prayers.

Except…

It didn’t really work.

And we went bankrupt again, lost the house again, PLUS, were pushed to move to Jerusalem. (Thank God, btw. In hindsight, this was probably one of the biggest blessings we ever had.)

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Without rehashing everything, I spent years and years raging against the ‘false rabbis’ that had misadvised us.

And then, I realised something: I was responsible for what had happened to me, and nobody else.

It was my own bad middot that led me to gravitate to those ‘false rabbis’ in the first place. It was only after that huge clean up process, that we could get anywhere near Rav Berland, who has proven to be such a blessing to us, in so many ways.

But not because he tells us what to do. In fact, I try very hard to avoid asking the Rav questions these days, as the answers typically just confuse me more.

Why?

Because the Rav is teaching anyone who is willing to learn the lesson, that our own free choice is the biggest gift from God, the main reason we were created, and cannot be given away to anyone else. Not even the Gadol HaDor.

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So, 2026 rolls around, we’ve been picking up the pieces again the last few years, bought a place ‘off plan’ in Katzrin, that we are now trying to sell in order to see if finally, some how, we can find something small of our own in Jerusalem.

So of course, the same test rolls around again: yucky horrible clients that don’t pay, and a feeling that everything is ‘meaningless’ and pointless.

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What’s the fix, the answer, the teshuva, this time around?

To blame the clients? To go AWOL into ‘fake emuna’, where we barricade ourselves in a beis hamidrash and live in a dumpster?

Or, to finally take a long, hard look at the bad middot, the unhelpful behaviour patterns, the false beliefs, that are causing this situation to re-occur?

Bad middot include playing ‘nice guy’ all the time, because you are scared of confrontation. Or, acting like the suffering martyr, all out there for ‘everyone else’, because really, you are ruled by fear of looking bad and feeling guilty. Perhaps, the kindness to others is a control strategy, to keep them onside and pliable.

Bad middot also includes ‘avoidance’, where we run away into bad habits, addictions, surfing, being online ALL THE TIME, in order to ‘escape’ from reality.

And that avoidance can also lead some people to try to run away into ‘learning Torah’, or ‘working hard’ – which sounds like it’s coming from a really good place, but not so infrequently, actually isn’t.

We can’t ‘avoid’ ourselves.

Our own responsibilities.

Our duties to ourselves, the people we love – and to God.

Not even when it’s labelled as ‘having emuna’.

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Obviously, this is not just a ‘men at work’ problem.

It’s also a ‘women with their families’ problem.

Instead of ranting at kids, spouses, God, the landlord, the neighbours, the work is also to figure out, what are my own bad middot, that are causing God to show me a ‘mirror’ so full of crazy, self-absorbed, lying-to-themselves suffering martyrs?

For example.

I am grappling with all this myself, still, I’m still trying to move out of ‘permanent victim’ state myself, to understand where my own ‘avoidance’ and anger and C-PTSD reactions are causing me the real problems in my life.

This is hard, but actually very empowering, because once I stop blaming everyone else, I have to knuckle down to taking responsibility, and asking God to help me fix what is still so very broken.

Because, it’s a partnership.

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Xtianity says – leave it all to God, He’ll fix everything, and you just have to ‘connect’ ,then carry on doing any sin you want, because Yoshki will take of that for you, no worries.

But Judaism, at least, Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, say for sure, we can’t do this without God. But God also can’t do this, without us, and our efforts and prayers and spiritual and material hishtadlut.

Breslov Judaism teaches that each of us is responsible for fixing the world, by fixing ourselves, and our own bad middot and lack of real emuna.

Yes, God is doing absolutely everything, for our ultimate good.

But if you just can’t stand your life at the moment, or parts of it, then you have to get real, look in the mirror and ask that hard question:

Why is God arranging things like this, at the moment?

What is He trying to show me, or teach me, about what I myself need to change or work on, to get out of the pit I’m stuck in?

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I do an hour of hitbodedut every day, and believe me, I am still quite a way off from having all the answers to that question.

But, I’m getting there slowly.

With God’s help.