“Don’t hide from me” pleads Hasidic singer
Avraham Fried. The idea of God hiding has been used in response to the question
“Where was God during the Holocaust?”
and to explain the persecution of “God’s treasured people”. I am curious about
how a people with a terrible history of suffering interprets the symbolism of a
God with a “hidden
face”.
In
our Torah reading this week (Vayelech), we encounter the idea of God hiding as
punishment for a disloyal people. “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? And I will hide, [yes] I will hide My face on that day,
because of all the evil they have committed, when they turned to other gods”.1
One
Jewish response to “God
hiding” that resonates for
me is deep sadness. “Rabbi Johanan, when he came to the [following] verse,
wept: And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are come upon
them. A slave whose Master brings many evils and troubles upon him, is there
any remedy for him?!”2 Some have argued that God
didn’t
cause the Holocaust, or the terrible violence of our own time, that man instead
is to blame. I agree that humans must certainly be held to account, but letting
God off the hook in this way does not work for me. My orientation to God is as
the source of sustenance and protection.
God must have been present at Auschwitz and could thus arguably appear to
be complicit in the evil deeds of the Nazis. The response to suffering I find
most useful is in the statement that “it is not in our hands to grasp [the
reasons for] the tranquillity of the wicked nor the ordeals of the righteous”.3
One
approach to the verse about the slave seems to be focused on making sense of
the words, but also sheds some light on the reality they describe. “What is
the meaning of ‘evils and troubles’? — Rab said: Evils which become antagonists to
each other, as for instance the [bites of] a wasp and a scorpion”. This is a classic catch 22: the treatment of one kind of bite is
to wash it with cold water and that bite is made worse by hot water, while the
reverse is true with the other.4 A variation of this bind is seen when “Jews in exile would be mistreated by a non-Jewish person. If the Jew
complained it increased the hatred of the perpetrator and would be spread to
others, but if he is silent then the perpetrator will become accustomed to
doing this in this way”.5 Australian Muslims, like
American Blacks, sometimes find themselves in a similar bind. If they complain
they are the “Angry Muslim”, like the
“Angry Black Man”; if they are silent
the problems persist.
The
attraction of the idea of God hiding, in some interpretations, is that one can
continue to believe in benign divine providence and engagement with the Jews
despite intensely cruel oppression. One such approach, implausible to me, is
that God’s hiding his face is “in a way of affection” like a father of
a misbehaving child who instructs the child’s teacher to beat him but
cannot bear to look himself, and turns away, because of his feeling for the
child.6 This anthropomorphism comforts persecuted
believers by telling them that although they may feel abandoned by God, God
still cares. In fact He cares so much that it is as if he is looking away
because he cannot bear to witness their pain.
One
of the themes of Christian antisemitism was the idea that God had rejected the
Jews. Although God hiding his face from the Jews could be understood as
supporting that idea, commentators argue that the opposite is true: “it is
not as they [the Jews] think, that I [God] am not among them [which explains
their suffering] but indeed in every place that they will be, my presence will
be found there but I will hide my face from helping them”.7 Other commentators go as far as condemning the
Jews for their belief that God had abandoned them, declaring that this lack of
faith in God’s continuing providence is the very sin that leads to God redoubling
his determination to hide from them.8
Sitting
in the comfort of 21st Century Australia it is hard to imagine the hell
experienced by our people in other times and places, or that being endured by
members of many other nations and faiths today.
As I prepare for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, for me also a day for
reconciliation with God, I wonder about this punitive cruel God. One way of
explaining the Kol Nidrei prayer, which calls for the absolving of vows, is
that God Himself is asking to be absolved from the system of rewards,
punishments and “hiding” that he promised in the Torah. Yes, there needs to be accountability by the
Jews for compliance with God's laws but punishment is not the only option
available to God for holding us to account. The approach of restorative justice
uses shame and awareness of the harm itself as more potent alternatives to
punishment.9
Perhaps God hides because
of an estrangement between humans and God, and our failure to live up to the ideals and
principles that God calls us to live by. I am up for this kind of reconciliation.
1.
Deuteronomy 31:17-18
2.
Talmud
Chagiga 5a
3.
Pirkey
Avot, (Ethics of the fathers) 4:11
4.
Rashi
5.
Bchor
Shor, Meam Loez, p. 1247, Vagshal
edition
6.
Bchor
Shor, Chizkuni, Daat Zekainim Mbaalei Hatosafot,
7.
Seforno
8.
R.A
Hacohen, cited in Meam Loez, p. 1272, Vagshal editiontheme is discussed in Meam
Loez, p. 1248, Vagshal edition
9.
This theme
is discussed in Meam Loez, p. 1248, Vagshal edition
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