 And the external circumstances that bring about success depend on God alone.Hirsch taught that the very smallest part of one's good fortune can be ascribed to one's own merit, and more is due to the merit of one's ancestors, whose virtues God rewards with their descendants' good fortune.Reading the 20th century Israeli scholar Nechama Leibowitz wrote that people in their blindness tend to detect the guiding hand of Providence only when manifested in visible miracles, as the Israelites witnessed in the wilderness.