In Hiding - וילך

In Hiding 

Our history has not always been rosy. We have experienced tranquility, peace and spiritual greatness, yet we have also experienced terrible exile, destruction and persecution. Indeed, on the last day of the life of Moses, G-d tells Moses what will befall the people when they abandon G-d:

And the Lord said to Moses: Behold, you are [about to] lie with your forefathers, and this nation will rise up and stray after the deities of the nations of the land, into which they are coming. And they will forsake Me and violate My covenant which I made with them.

And My fury will rage against them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them, and they will be consumed, and many evils and troubles will befall them, and they will say on that day, 'Is it not because our God is no longer among us, that these evils have befallen us?'

The purpose of these harsh words was not merely to warn the Jewish people of the consequence of abandoning their destiny. Perhaps more importantly, the purpose was to ensure that the people correctly interpret, and as a result, correctly respond to, the difficult exile. The natural response to the “many evils and troubles” is for the people to believe that G-d “is no longer among us” - that G-d had abandoned them. Yet, as G-d told Moses, that conclusion would be categorically wrong.  

G-d told Moses:

And I will hide My face on that day, because of all the evil they have committed, when they turned to other deities.

Only because of these words, conveyed to the Jewish people by Moses, were they able to survive until this day. If we are here as Jews today it is because generations of Jews understood this truth. That the exile is not the absence of G-d’s love and presence, but rather the exile is merely a concealment of G-d’s grace. “I will hide My face on that day”, says G-d. The Jewish people understood that hiding is by no means an abandonment. They felt G-d’s presence even in the most difficult circumstances.  

And then came the mystics.

They understood that all existence is dependent on G-d and that there is no place void of Him. When they looked at darkness, when they saw no obvious light, they understood that although G-d’s presence is not revealed in a given space his essence is present there. They understood that the most powerful message in the verse ““And I will hide My face on that day” is not that G-d will hide but rather that even within the concealment, even within the difficulty, G-d is very much present.

They understood that for a parent to withhold the expression of love in order to give the child space for trial and error, the parent must reach deep within him or herself, the parent must access a deeper level of love. Indeed when the verse says “and I will hide my face” it uses the the Hebrew word “Anochi”, which means more than “I” (“I” is “Ani”). “Anochi” means “my essence”.

Every year this portion is read in proximity to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we engage in introspection, seek atonement and spiritual betterment, when we look back at the past year we see moments of joy and inspiration, but also moments of darkness, hurt and despair. The Torah teaches us that specifically in the moments of concealment lies the potential to reach the deepest part of ourselves. When we feel no inspiration, no excitement, no enthusiasm, we must understand that the concealment is a tool to encourage us to reach deeper within ourselves, to get in touch with our own core, our own “Anochi”. Doing so will allow us to discover that within the concealment we can access the deepest Divine strength, and, ultimately, transform the darkness to light.   

(Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Lekutei Sichos Vayelech vol. 9 sicha 1).