by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin
the chief rabbi of the city of Efrat and dean of Ohr Torah Institutes in Israel.

The joys (and hangovers) of Purim still linger, and the portion Ki Tisa arrives to teach us the origin of one of the most important lessons of Jewish theology: Why is the divine face so often hidden from our sight? Why does the world in general and life in particular so often seem to lack God’s compassion and concern?

After all, Purim is the anti-holiday featuring God’s hiddenness; that is why God’s name is absent from the Scroll of Esther. Although the Jewish community of Persia avoids destruction, it must nevertheless undergo a costly battle, Esther remains the queen of a gentile despot, and at the conclusion of the story, “the Jews are still servants to Ahasueros.” No wonder we need to drink so much wine in order to induce feelings of joy! But why must we endure exile and angst, persecution and pogrom, as the cost of our survival? “My God, why hast Thou forsaken us?”

In Ki Tisa we read that the nation has hedonistically sinned by worshiping the golden calf. Moses wishes total absolution for his nation and desires even more: that God’s “face” constantly be with them (33:15), that they see God’s “face,” that God’s goodness and compassion constantly be manifest. God explains that no individual may see God’s face and live, that God can lead only from behind a veiled curtain (hester panim, 33:23). Indeed, the Almighty even reveals why his hiddenness is actually a blessing: “I shall send before you an agent [or messenger, or angel, or national leaders] and [through the nation and its leaders], I shall banish the Canaanites…to the land flowing with milk and honey; but I shall not arise in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way…. And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiff-necked nation; if for one moment I shall arise in your midst, I shall destroy you….” (33:2-5)

God’s direct intervention in human and cosmic affairs would be a double-edged sword, explains the Bible. Since immediate reward and punishment means uplifting the righteous and destroying the evil, under such close divine supervision, the Israelites may well have found themselves totally denuded even before their history got under way. God must therefore operate indirectly. And so He established a special relationship, a covenant, with our nation, which he shall lead only from behind. Our nation will have the obligation and mission to eventually make the world a fit place for God’s presence. However, the nation will experience triumphs and tragedies, privileges and punishments, successes and setbacks, until the eventual vision of the full manifestation of God’s great and holy name is realized at the time of redemption.

It is the Jewish nation, therefore, that will play this special role and it is through the nation that — even if it be obscure — God will reveal himself (or part of himself: his back) to the world. Hence God tells Moses that he must descend from the lofty heights of the heavens where he is receiving God’s words and descend to the sinning Israelites around the golden calf, because the nation must be uplifted, purged, and purified. (32:7, B.T. Berachat 32) And so the second set of tablets is hewn and written down by Moses, an expression of the new reality that the nation’s leaders must interpret and expand upon God’s Torah through the explications and applications, the decrees and enactments of the Oral Law. First the nation, God’s messenger, must become whole and healed; then God’s name will be complete and manifest in our midst.

From this perspective, the Purim holiday takes on a new perspective. Yes, God is completely hidden in the assimilating, fractious Jewish nation living in Persia. Esther’s very name reflects God’s absence (Esther, hester, hidden) as this woman of Jewish ancestry enters the emperor’s harem. There were those Jews who identified the Persian palace with the desert sanctuary and Holy Temple (Scroll of Esther 1:5), and there were those who wept each midnight over “tikun hatzot” (a plea for restoration of the Temple); there were those Jews who reveled with the Persians at the feast and bar, and there were those Jews who ate only fish, and there were probably Jews who showed up but did not even touch a morsel of food. Was it not Haman who described the Jews of Persia as “scattered and separated”? (3:8) And it was Esther who eventually understands that even a partial victory could be won only if the Jewish community were to unite under God. Mordecai stresses only that Esther must remonstrate before Ahasueros; Esther demands that first “Mordecai must go and assemble all the Jews of Shushan together, to declare a period of fasting and prayer…. After that, I shall go to the king…and if I am destroyed, I shall be destroyed....” (4:15, 16)

Esther wins the day — but only after she unites the Persian Jewish community. And so our method of celebrating Purim expresses the unification of our communal ties: giving charity, giving gifts to our friends, joining in communal meals, and reading the Scroll of Esther in communal gatherings. The more our nation unites, the more will God’s name be united; at that time we will witness the unification of the world under the one God of justice, compassion, and peace.

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