Can HaMaspik Le'Ovdei HaShem be brought as support for the approach to hishtadlus in Ben Melech?

Of late, I've begun to review Rav Avraham ben HaRambam's treatise on bitachon in HaMaspik Le'Ovdei HaShem (numerous times in quick succession), with the intent of marking up my copy of Ben Melech's essay on hishtadlus with references to where Rav Avraham has the same approach. I hoped that in doing so, Sefer HaMaspik would do for us the same two things that he did for us last year, when we were learning the Chazon Ish's approach to bitachon.

1. Help us get a better understanding of the text in front us that we are learning (last year Emunah u-Bitachon Chazon Ish and this year Ben Melech on hishtadlus)
2. Provide support from an early Rishon for an approach that you could argue is a departure from the standard approaches to the subject.

As I began to underline more and more places in my copy of HaMaspik Le'Ovdei HaShem that I felt were clear support what is written in Ben Melech***, I was becoming more and more convinced that Rav Leib Mintzberg's approach to hishtadlus was just a re-stating of what is written in HaMaspik in a more modern prose.

What immediately caught my attention was that in HaMaspik, Rav Avraham describes what proper hishtadlus should look like.

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ואין כונת הפסוקים … כי מפני בטחונו רשאי שומר התורה לישב בחיבוק ידים ללא מאמץ להשגת פרנסתן

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השמר אפוא לבל תשקע ראשך ורבך בסיבות ובעבודת הפרנסה

אלא ראה את הבטחון בה' יתעלה כמחיב אותך לסמוך עליו תוך כדי עסוק באמנות רגילה, והצטמצם במלאכה פשוטה שאיננה טורדת אותך מעבודתו יתעלה ורק כדי חייך.

That Rav Avraham should come out forcefully that a person must engage in hishtadlus and cannot employ his bitachon to rely on miracles is of no surprise to anyone, but his description of appropriate hishtadlus, is the closest that I've seen in any Rishon to what Ben Melech describes as darko shel olam.

There is surely an epochal difference that is easily discernable, where Ben Melech IS different from HaMaspik, in that Rav Mintzberg takes into account modern man's more complex and different circumstances and then paints the picture for us of how they are relevant to our calculating the appropriate amount of hishtadlus to undertake. Ben Melech describes in detail, how to take these considerations into account, at a much more granular level than Rav Avraham ben HaRambam had any reason to pursue. So for example, the fact that Ben Melech mentions additional criteria for fine tuning the amount of hishtadlus that is appropriate for YOU individually, should not be taken as an inference that Rav Mintzberg and Rav Avraham may be at odds over defining what is appropriate hishtadlus in general.

However, there was still something gnawing at me that I couldn't quite place and that unease led me to return to reviewing repeatedly my underlined passages in HaMaspik at an even faster pace, while also pausing to re-read and chew on some of the individual sentences, to ensure the accuracy of my thinking.

It then hit me that the reason that I was having difficulty fitting Rav Mintzberg into HaMaspik (or maybe it's the reverse, that the difficulty that I encountered was fitting Rav Avraham into Rav Mintzberg's box), was that as opposed to Rav Mintzberg, I had yet to see where Rav Avraham referred to the physical acts of hishtadlus in such positive terms as for example saying that the reason why you have to do hishtadlus is because in doing hishtadlus you are fulfilling the ratzon HaShem for how the world should run.

90 בן מלך
הרי מי שסומך ובוטח על הקב״ה ומניח עצמו להנהגתו יתברך, הרי עלי ו לנהוג כפי שקבע ה׳ בעולם שרק כך ישיג האדם צרכיו אלו, ויעשה פעולות השתדלו ת כשנצרך להשיג ענייניו, משום שכך הוא רצון ה', וכך קבע מנהיג העולם שהאדם יזדקק לפעולות אלו כדי להגיע לצרכיו.

Rav Avraham is much more about doing hishtadlus because if you don't it will lead to a chillul Hashem or because it shows a lack of wisdom in understanding how the world works. Rav Avraham is much more about taking the natural course of the way the world works, as a given. As something that a person much work with, but Rav Avraham does not get poetic about there being a ratzon HaShem that you are involved in bringing to fruition.

You could probably argue that when Rav Avraham refers to hishtadlus in a way that portrays as a fool the person who does not engage in hishtadlus, because that's just how the world works, end of story (which btw, is the nicest thing that Rav Avraham would have to say about this person). In which case, you could say that my insisting upon wanting to see such a positive expression along the lines of "doing the ratzon HaShem" is just being picky. But I'm not yet convinced.

I also began to question whether I had read too much into Rav Mintzberg's use of the term "ratzon HaShem" and other such terms and that perhaps Rav Mintzberg did not mean to put as much of a positive spin on it as I had inferred.

But there's more to my line of reasoning, that suggests a divergence between Rav Avraham ben HaRambam and Rav Mintzberg.

Rav Avraham continually makes the point that the most basic premise (ikar) of any balance between bitachon and hishtadlus (if there even is such a thing a balance that needs to be maintained between them), is that you need to do those things that shore up your bitachon first, before you engage in hishtadlus.

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הריהו נוהג בזה בהיפך מידת הבטחון, שאינו סומך ובוטח על ה׳ ואינו נותן אמון בהשגחתו, להניח עצמו על הנהגתו יתברך, שיהיה משיג צרכיו בדרך שקבע ה׳ עבורו, וכפי שמנחה אותו בדרכו של עולם, אלא רוצה שיתנו לו באופן אחר, כפי שנראה לו , ולא כפי שהקב״ה קבע, וזה היפך הבטחוך

105 בן מלך
ועל כל אחד להתאים את מעשי השתדלותו ופעולותיו לסדר ההנהגה המיוחד לו כפי שמבחין שקבעו עבורו מן השמים, ואין לו להתעקש ולהתנגד”, לא למעט בפעולות השתדלות, וגם שלא להוסיף ולהרבות בהשתדלות", אלא להיות בוטח וסומך על ה׳ שמנהיגים אותו באופן הנכון ביותר עבורו, ולהאמין כי כאשר יעסוק במידת ההשתדלות אשר נקבע עבורו יהיו לו צרכיו המגיעים לו כפי שנגזר עליו. ולא יתרעם ולא יתמרמר על מעמדו ומנת חלקו, אלא יהיה מרוצה ומסכים להנהגת ה׳ שנותן לו במידה זו, ובזה הוא בגדר בוטח בה׳, שבוטח בו ומניח עצמו לקביעתו והנהגתו.

My impression is that in Ben Melech, this is not even a theme mingled in with hishtadlus. The emphasis is on doing hishtadlus because it's in keeping with the ratzon HaShem. You don't see any discussion that for hishtadlus to have any value in terms of bitachon, the focus must be on the bitachon aspect, more than on the hishtadlus aspect.

Maybe again, perhaps I'm being too picky, but I get the impression from Ben Melech, that the hishtadlus (almost) stands on its own, as long as you keep in mind that the hishtadlus won't work unless there is geziras elyon (decreed by Hashem), that the hishtadlus should meet with success.

I began to ask myself where the disconnect was? Was it that I mis-read Ben Melech and put too much positive emphasis on the physical acts of hishtadlus? Or was it that what is written in Ben Melech is seriously at odds with what is written in HaMaspik? And if I found a real gap between Rav Mintzberg and Rav Avraham ben HaRambam, did Rav Mintzberg think that he and Rav Avraham were in sync with each other? Or was he well aware that he was saying one thing and Rav Avraham was saying another and Rav Mintzberg had other early sources that could support his thesis about the positive aspects of hishtadlus?

The Akeida, Ralbag and maybe Ramban have a take on hishtadlus that demands much more actual hishtadlus than Rav Mintzberg. At the same time, Rav Mintzberg's seeming positive attitude towards hishtadlus as being the ratzon HaShem, may not be shared by those same Rishonim (but it will need some review and thinking before I'm ready to say that they had a positive attitude towards hishtadlus).

To be fair, let's also keep in mind that at no time did Rav Mintzberg claim or even hint that his approach to hishtadlus is in sync or supported by Rav Avraham ben HaRambam. This was all my own fishing expedition, in an attempt to find a Rishon who can be used as support for what is written in Ben Melech about hishtadlus. So while it is likely that this was a "red herring" on my part, it is also likely that Rav Avraham ben HaRambam and Rav Mintzberg are using different approaches and are not in sync. The accomplishment of this effort has been that we've had to further concretize the boundaries of bitachon and hishtadlus according to Rav Mintzberg.

*** I will return to what I found in Hamaspik Le'Ovedei HaShem that I see as support for Ben Melech in another post