How Do You Hold On to Faith When You Don't Understand What G-d Is Doing?

Esther Nava
3 minutes ago
7 min read

What emunah actually asks of you during the hardest month of the Jewish year

There are seasons when emunah feels easy. And then there is Av.

You know the feeling before you can name it. The air gets heavier around the Three Weeks. Old griefs you thought you'd made peace with resurface, right on schedule, like your body remembers something your mind has tried to move past. You sit with a question you've probably asked more than once: why does HaShem feel close one day and impossibly far away the next?

Here is the direct answer, the one worth sitting with before anything else: emunah, faithful trust, does not require you to understand what HaShem is doing. It asks something smaller and, honestly, harder. It asks whether you can stay in relationship with Him while you don't understand. That single shift, from "can I explain this" to "can I remain," is the entire hidden invitation of the month of Av.

Key Takeaways

Emunah is not the absence of grief. Torah gave an entire mourning season to Av, which means the pain is meant to be felt, not bypassed.
The real question during hard seasons isn't "can I understand this," it's "can I stay in relationship while I don't."
Psychological research on meaning-making backs up an old spiritual instinct: people cope best with loss not by finding an explanation, but by finding a way to hold the loss inside a larger, ongoing story.
The name Av means father. The same month that carries the nation's deepest grief also carries its most intimate name for HaShem, Avinu, our Father.
Consolation, nechamah, isn't returning to who you were before the break. It's permission to let the story be larger than the page you're currently on.

Why Av Feels So Heavy, and Why That's Not a Malfunction

If you've ever felt guilty for how much this season affects you, hear this first: you are not doing faith wrong.

Av carries the memory of everything that was lost. The Beit HaMikdash. Security. Closeness. The felt sense that HaShem's Presence is right here, visible, undeniable. That kind of loss doesn't stay in the past. It shows up in your chest during the Nine Days whether or not you can articulate why.

I've sat with enough women in my community to know this isn't rare. It's the woman who is tired of trying to understand her life. Why did this happen? Why hasn't that prayer been answered yet? Why does HaShem feel close one week and unreachable the next? Av doesn't invent these questions. It just makes them impossible to ignore.

And Torah does not rush you past them. Our Sages built an entire season for mourning, not because grief needs an excuse, but because a broken heart deserves the time it takes to actually break. Emunah was never meant to be a bypass around that. It's not pretending destruction doesn't hurt.

What the Research Actually Shows About Faith, Grief, and Not Knowing

This is where Torah's ancient instinct and modern psychology land in the same place, which is worth knowing, because it means what your tradition asks of you isn't naive. It's borne out.

Psychologist Crystal Park's meaning-making model, one of the most cited frameworks in the psychology of coping, distinguishes between two kinds of meaning: the deep, global beliefs we hold about how the world works, and the situational meaning we assign to a specific loss. Her research found that when an experience feels discrepant with those deeper beliefs, people experience real distress and spend real effort trying to make meaning of it. In plain language: pain that seems to contradict everything you believed about a fair, ordered world hits harder, and healing depends less on explaining the event and more on finding a way to hold it inside a larger, still-intact story.

A 2007 review published in Palliative Medicine, looking across decades of bereavement research, found that roughly ninety-four percent of studies showed some positive effect of religious or spiritual belief on bereavement, though the same review was honest that the research is inconsistent in design. Faith helps, broadly and repeatedly, even when science can't fully explain why.

But there's a real nuance here, and it matters. A University of Southampton study following bereaved spouses for two years found something specific: uncertain faith, marked by doubt as much as hope, was more often associated with depressive symptoms and lower levels of experienced meaning than either devout belief or a well-articulated secular worldview. The people who struggled most weren't the believers or the non-believers. They were the ones stuck in between, unsure whether to trust what they couldn't feel.

That finding lines up almost exactly with what Av is teaching. The danger isn't doubt itself. It's staying suspended in it, unable to choose whether to remain in relationship. A 2022 study on religious coping during grief found something similar: mourners who experienced their faith as abandonment, feeling punished or forsaken by God, showed more intense and prolonged emotional dysregulation than those who leaned toward closeness, even amid the same loss.

The difference wasn't whether the pain was real. It was whether the relationship stayed open.

The Reframe: Av Isn't Asking You to Understand. It's Asking You to Stay.

Here is where I think most teaching on faith during hard seasons gets it slightly wrong. It rushes from "this hurts" straight to "everything is for your good," and skips the step in between. That skip is where people quietly stop believing the teacher, even if they nod along.

You may not be able to see the good from where you are standing. Torah does not ask you to call the pain painless.

But it does ask you to consider something. Chodesh Av carries two letters, aleph and bet. Our Sages teach that from the first of Av until the ninth, the month is arur, constriction. From the tenth, the turn already begins. By the fifteenth, Tu B'Av, it turns baruch, blessing. The month itself was architected to move from lack toward wholeness. Not despite the lack. Through it.

And here's the detail I don't think gets said enough: the very name of this month, אָב, Av, means father. In the exact month that carries the nation's deepest grief, we are handed its most intimate name for relationship. אָבִינוּ, Avinu. Our Father. Not a distant judge. Not an explanation owed. A father, present in the room even when the lights are off.

That is the reframe. The question Av is actually asking you isn't "can I understand what HaShem is doing." It's "can I remain in relationship with HaShem while I do not understand." Chazal teach that Mashiach is associated with the very day of the Beit HaMikdash's destruction, a Torah pattern stating plainly that redemption can already be germinating inside what looks, from where you're standing, like an ending (see Eichah Rabbah 1:51).

This is nechamah, consolation. And it is worth being precise about what that word does not mean. It is not denial. It is not spiritual bypassing. It is not forcing yourself to say "everything is wonderful" while your heart is hurting. Nechamah is allowing the possibility that the story HaShem is writing may be larger than the page you're currently reading.

What This Looks Like When You're the One Standing Inside It

So if you enter Av carrying something unresolved, you do not need to manufacture perfect emunah. You need one honest sentence, said while you're still inside the not-knowing.

Put your hand gently over your heart. Take one slow breath and say:

רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם, אֲנִי לֹא מְבִינָה, אֲבָל אֲנִי עֲדַיִן פֹּה אִתְּךָ.

Ribbono Shel Olam, ani lo mevinah, aval ani adayin poh Itcha.

Master of the Universe, I do not understand. But I am still here with You.

That, too, is emunah. Maybe especially in Av.

You do not have to rebuild the whole Beit HaMikdash today. You just need to find one small place inside yourself where HaShem can dwell again.

Five Ways to Practice This During the Nine Days

Name the specific ache, don't generalize it. "I'm struggling" is vague enough to avoid. "I don't understand why this prayer hasn't been answered" is specific enough to actually bring to HaShem. Specificity is what makes the relationship real instead of theoretical.
Say the one sentence, out loud if you can. Ribbono Shel Olam, ani lo mevinah, aval ani adayin poh Itcha. Let it be a practice, not a one-time line. Say it in the car, at the sink, before candle lighting.
Take five quiet minutes to listen, not to explain. Hasket u'shema Yisrael, be still and listen, is the actual instruction for this season. Not forcing an answer onto the grief. Growing quiet enough to notice one place where something might already be rebuilding, even if you can't see its shape yet.
Track the turn, don't just endure the constriction. Mark the tenth of Av on your calendar as the day the energy begins shifting, and Tu B'Av as where it lands in fullness. Watching a hard period move toward an actual, dated turning point is different from just waiting for pain to end.
Let one honest tear count as a full spiritual act. You are not failing at faith if you cry this month. One prayer, one honest tear, one whispered "I am still here," is nechamah in progress, not a lack of it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it normal to feel distant from God during the month of Av? Yes. Torah itself designates the Nine Days and the Three Weeks as a mourning period, which means the felt distance is expected, not a sign your faith is weak. The goal isn't to eliminate the feeling but to stay in relationship through it.

What does nechamah, consolation, actually mean if it isn't "everything happens for a reason"? Nechamah means allowing that the story HaShem is writing may be larger than what you can currently see, without requiring you to explain or accept the pain as good. It's relational, not explanatory.

Why is the month called Av if it's associated with destruction and grief? Av means father. The same month carrying the nation's deepest historical grief also carries Avinu, our Father, one of the most intimate names for HaShem in Jewish prayer, a deliberate pairing of loss and closeness.

What's the difference between Tisha B'Av and Tu B'Av? Tisha B'Av, the ninth of Av, marks the destruction of both Batei Mikdash and is the height of mourning. Tu B'Av, the fifteenth, is one of the most joyous days on the Jewish calendar. The month is built to move from one to the other.

What can I actually say when I don't understand what's happening in my life? Ribbono Shel Olam, ani lo mevinah, aval ani adayin poh Itcha, Master of the Universe, I do not understand, but I am still here with You. It's a complete prayer on its own, honest rather than resolved.