Lately, when people ask me how I'm doing, I've been responding that the next few weeks for a rabbi are kind of like tax-season for accountants. Hectic, very, very hectic. Everything is about Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah; all the holidays that come in rapid succession throughout the month of September. So I was quite surprised when I heard my colleague, Cantor Steven Friedrich, mention the holiday of Purim (which doesn't come until March) in services on Monday morning. Who talks about Purim right now?
It turns out he was looking at this week's Torah portion, Nitzavim-Vayelech, and a specific verse in chapter 31 of the Book of Deuteronomy. God tells Moses he is about to die, and that the people will soon thereafter turn away from the commandments of the Torah. In verse 18, God says, "Yet I will keep my countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods." The Hebrew phrase for the hiding of God's face is, "Haster Astir Panai," and Cantor Friedrich pointed out how similar the words "Haster" and "Astir" are to the name of the heroine on Purim, "Esther." And indeed, on Purim we find no mention of God's name in the Book of Esther, and Esther herself "hides" her identity from the king and his advisors, and ultimately it winds up saving our people.
While considering Cantor Friedrich's fascinating observation, I also read a commentary quoted in the Etz Chayim Torah Commentary about a rabbi named Dov Baer of Mezeritch who one day found his son crying. He asked him what was wrong, and the boy said, "I was playing hide-and-
seek with my friends, and I hid so well that they stopped looking for me and went away." Dov Baer goes on to say that God must feel the same way, having hidden so well that many of us now live our lives without God. I was intrigued by this story! Perhaps God did indeed choose to hide because human beings were being sinful, but the point was always for us to keep looking for God; to seek a relationship and try to be close. Where did we lose our way?
Some people shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, who needs God anyway?!" But it's also about finding a way back to ourselves, a way back to happiness, health, and striving to live a good life. In many ways, we have stopped looking for those things as well. The High Holidays, which are right around the corner now, allow us some time to resume the search. We take time out from work, stress, and ambition, and return to peace, reflection, and introspection.
But the answers are not just sitting there waiting for you, like a dog on the front step, anticipating your homecoming. If you want to return to a relationship with God, to explore existential questions and understand what's going on inside yourself, you will have to work a little harder to uncover it.
For me, the question still remains;
why do we stop looking? Why
do we often behave like the friends of the crying child, who give up searching all too soon? The answer to that question is different for each of us. And the time to start pursuing an answer begins right now.
Shana Tovah - Happy and Healthy New Year!
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