When God Hides His Face

Hester Panim - when God appears absent - is a foundational part of human experience. We forget this at our own peril.

We need to start talking about hester panim again.

Hester panim means the hiding of God’s face, and it has been an integral part of Jewish theology from time immemorial. Because we have been living a charmed existence for years - half of the world’s Jews living in a thriving and prosperous State of Israel, most of the others living in countries where the free expression of religion is protected, with economic success available to so many, and advances in medicine and technology making life easier and more pleasant - hester panim has ceased playing a major role in Jewish thinking. Of course, we all experience moments and hours and days and even years of hester panim on an individual or family level; but on a societal level, in the words of the songwriter, good times never seemed so good.

Yet hester panim is inescapable. Sometimes we experience that terrible absence because of our deeds (“I will surely hide My face from them on that day because of all the evil that they did” - Devarim 31:18). Other times we experience the tangible darkness because hester panim was baked into the universe at the moment of creation, as a foundational reality that, at least until the final redemption, will never truly go away.

As I wrote several months ago, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov teaches (Likutei Moharan 64) that two sources of evil are essentially byproducts of creation itself: the chalal hapanui, the vacated space where God appears absent, and the shvirat hakeilim, the broken vessels of good that, because of an excess of light, descended into the realm of darkness. We need not examine these important Kabbalistic ideas in depth; it is enough to recognize that emptiness, darkness, brokenness - that is, hester panim - is, for reasons we will never understand, part of the divine plan.

But we don’t need mystical sources to prove this; it’s equally clear from numerous passages in Rashi’s commentary on the first chapter of Genesis. Why, on the second day of creation, are the words, “God saw that it was good” missing from the Torah’s account of that day’s activity? Because the work was left incomplete and was not finished until the following day. Thus, incompleteness is part of the fabric of the universe. Why, on the third day, did the Torah first describe the trees as “fruit trees” and then as “trees that make fruit”? Because the trees ignored God’s command that the wood of a tree should also taste like fruit. No one claims that trees have free will - which means that the disobedience of the trees was a reflection of God’s will. Thus, disobedience is part of the fabric of the universe. Why, on the fourth day, are the sun and moon first described as “the two large luminaries,” and then immediately afterwards called “the large luminary… and the small luminary”? Because, the midrash relates, the moon balked at two kings sharing a single crown, and was shrunken as a result. Thus, the occultation of light, the fact that the moon waxes and wanes, is part of the fabric of the universe.

The example of the moon is a particularly noteworthy symbol of the inevitability of hester panim. Every month, Jews engage in a surprising ritual called kiddush levana, or the sanctification of the moon. Kiddush levana takes place at some point during the waxing moon - that is, not earlier than 72 hours after the new moon, and not later than when the moon is full - and consists of a blessing and several other verses and recitations.

In a passage pregnant with meaning, the blessing includes the words, “[God] told the moon to renew itself as a crown of beauty for those held in the womb [i.e., Israel] who are destined to be renewed like it.” In different terms, the moon is a symbol of Israel; and just as the moon sometimes reflects the sun’s light, so does Israel reflect the countenance of God. Crucially, by implication, the diminishing of the moon is similarly a metaphor for the hiding of God’s light from Israel. For half of every month, that is, the moon demonstrates hester panim.

The standard Ashkenazic liturgy of kiddush levana also includes the following request:

May it be Your will, Hashem my God and the God of my fathers, to fill the deficiency of the moon such that it is no longer diminished. And may the light of the moon be like the light of the sun and like the light of the seven days of creation, as it was before it was shrunk - as the verse says, “the two large luminaries.”

Perhaps some take this prayer literally, but I think it is far more meaningful to read it symbolically. Just as the moon only produces light when the sun shines upon it, so does Israel only fulfill its divine mission when it reflects the countenance of the divine. Just as the sun sometimes shines on the moon and sometimes does not, so too God sometimes allows us to experience His light, and other times hides it such that we live in a state of hester panim. And just as the waxing and waning of the moon is part and parcel of creation, so are the cycles of divine favor and divine hiddenness an integral aspect of human existence. Our prayer is that the final redemption arrive, when the experience of God’s presence will be a permanent part of life, rather than a temporary state that is destined to change.

For too long, we have been understandably seduced by the incredible love and kindness that God has bestowed upon us, forgetting that until the final redemption, it cannot be permanent and unceasing. Hester panim comes and goes in waves - that’s a fundamental rule of human existence - and humanity will only break out of that cycle when history is over. In the meantime, we cannot risk forgetting that history has not ended; yet that seems to be what many of us have essentially assumed.

As Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm of blessed memory wrote in 1974, following the Yom Kippur War:

…The development of a formal ideology that asserts dogmatically that we are in a specific stage of the Messianic redemption may well be an act of presumption. Are those of us who are devoid of the gift of prophecy privy to divine secrets? Even to Moses, the greatest of all prophets, it was told, “Thou shalt see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” God’s plans may be known to man in all their magnificent detail and moral fullness only retrospectively… Ordinary humans tread on dangerous ground when they purport to view events from a divine perspective. I wish to make it clear that I do not deny the Messianic character of our times or of the State. To do so with any conviction would be to commit the same sin of presumption. What I am saying is that I do not know, and that I believe this form of skepticism or Messianic agnosticism is the only valid spiritual position under the present circumstances… I accept the State as an act of redemption, but not every redemption is necessarily Messianic.

The common assumption that history is nearing its conclusion, and that we have already exited the highway of history onto the exit ramp of the final redemption, is comforting but presumptuous. It also gives us license to make decisions that may be in the best interests of a Messianic reality, but not that of a this-worldly country that still needs to contend with the facts of history, politics, sociology, and human nature. Too often, we have ignored these authentic considerations based on the implicit assumption that God will help us - when, sadly, He made no such promise.

The terrible events of October 7th and their aftermath need to remind us that we have not yet reached the eschaton where hester panim will be a memory rather than a reality. When we leave behind our theological hubris and acknowledge that we must prepare for times of divine hiddenness, we will progress to a higher level of religious sophistication. If we remember that hester panim is part of the divine plan - that God steps aside, making us responsible for the perfection of the world - we will certainly dread that sense of absence; but we will also be prepared. 

Rashi comments that after God reduced the moon’s size in response to its arrogance, “He increased its host [the stars] in order to appease its [troubled] mind.” Hester panim is real and unavoidable; but when we accept it as part and parcel of the divine plan, God will allow us to see sparks of divine light even in the darkness of divine absence. For that’s the secret of hester panim: that it feels terribly real… but in actuality is only an illusion. We experience it as if it is happening, but we must also remember that God is not truly absent; He is merely hiding, and hiding very well. When we look deeper, we will not see the sun of full divine revelation - but we just may see the smaller lights of divine compassion and love.

We have, for the first time in years, entered a period of deep hester panim. May God make this period of hiddenness brief. May we acknowledge it and learn that we dare not pretend that history has reached its ultimate climax, and acquire the wisdom to plan accordingly.  And until the reappearance of God’s open and loving countenance, may He give us the gift of seeing the sparks of His light, reminding us that He is still with us even when He hides His face.