beshalach - hishtadlus vs desperation

There is a very famous Rashi that is somewhat difficult to understand.  Right before Moshe splits the yam suf, Hashem tells him, "מַה־תִּצְעַק אֵלָי דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִסָּעוּ".  Rashi explains: למדנו שהיה משה עומד ומתפלל, אמר לו הקב"ה לא עת עתה להאריך בתפלה שישראל נתונין בצרה.

Since when are you not supposed to daven when klal yisrael face a time of danger?  Chazal famously say, afilu cherev munachas al tzavaro, one should still daven.  Its not like Moshe had some way to save klal yisrael without a miracle such that he should have been performing hishtadlus instead of davening and relying on miraculous intervention by Hashem.  So why is Moshe criticized for his prayer?

People talk about this a lot.  But the ramban gives a very simple answer to this question:

ורבותינו אמרו (מכילתא כאן) שהיה משה צועק ומתפלל, והוא הנכון, כי לא ידע מה יעשה, ואף על פי שאמר לו השם ואכבדה בפרעה, הוא לא היה יודע איך יתנהג, כי הוא על שפת הים והשונא רודף ומשיג, והיה מתפלל שיורנו ה' דרך יבחר. וזה טעם מה תצעק אלי, שהיית צריך לשאל מה תעשה ואין לך צורך לצעוק, כי כבר הודעתיך ואכבדה בפרעה

It wasn't the tefillah that was wrong per se.  It was the way the tefillah was performed that reflected something wrong with Moshe.

Before we explain this, lets shift focus to the story of Yosef and the Sar Hamashkim.  We know that Yosef was punished for putting his trust in the sar hamashkim instead of having bitachon.  And again, it is difficult to understand what yosef did wrong.  A person isn't supposed to do hishtadlus?

The famous answer is that the amount of hishtadlus a person needs to do is a function of each person's respective madreigah.  Yosef was such a big tzaddik that for him, even asking the sar hamashkim was too much hishtadlus and was a chisaron in bitachon on his madreigah.

I don't like this teretz.  I have no kashyas on it to prove it wrong or anything like that (That is, this teretz is certainly defensible according to many rishonim. I'm not sure if it would hold according to all.)   But it is somewhat meaningless on my level (not that that is a metric of truth on any objective level) and misses the depth of the teretz we're about to give.

The Kli Yakar quotes the medrash that censures Yosef:

חז"ל אמרו (בראשית רבה פט ג) שיוסף חטא בזה שתלה בטחונו בשר המשקים, ואמר שתי פעמים לשון זכירה כי אם זכרתני וגו' והזכרתני וגו' וכנגדם נענש בכפל השכחה, ולא זכר שר המשקים את יוסף וישכחהו:

What difference does it make whether yosef says the word zechartani once or twice, such that chazal single that out as his sin?

I once heard explained that Yosef didn't do anything wrong by performing hishtadlus per se, but it was the way that Yosef did it that was his sin.  Hashem requires that we do hishtadlus - but that doesn't take away one bit from the fact that we have to have complete bitachon in Hashem and recognize that any possibility of success stems solely from G-d's will.  Yosef asked the sar hamashkim twice to be remembered; chazal looked at the pesukim and picked up a hint of desperation in Yosef's voice.  That has no place in the hishtadlus of a baal bitachon; one who trusts in G-d shouldn't feel desperate and feel the need to cling at straws by begging the sar hamashkim to remember him.  The way that Yosef did his hishtadlus reflected a lack of bitachon, and he was punished for that lack.

I believe that the ramban in beshalach is picking up on that same theme.  Davening is always appropriate, and all the more so in the face of distress (the ramban actually holds that tefillah is only deoraysa in an eis tzarah.)  But tefilah in the wrong way can also reflect a lack of bitachon; moshe's tefilah as a "tzeaka" and not "she-eilah" leads chazal to pick up on the desperation in Moshe's voice and censure him for that lapse.

The reason I like this approach more than the first one is because of the way it is simultaneously a poter and a  mechayev.  On the one hand, it levels the playing field - everyone has to do hishtadlus because thats the way Hashem created the world.  No one should expect G-d to just deliver manna to their feet.  On the other hand, unlike the other approach, this approach does not just leave the rest of us (who cannot expect open miracles) in the dust and say, "For you losers who have to do hishtadlus, none of this applies."  To the contrary, everyone who does hishtadlus is bound by the rules: G-d wants you to do hishtadlus, but only if you can simultaneously recognize that ultimately, everything stems from G-d.  The tzurah of the hishtadlus defines whether the act is one that is positive or negative; as we've discussed before, this is part of a general principle that the way an action is performed is often more important in defining the action than the actual action itself.  This is a tremendous mechayev.

Good shabbos!