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MARCH 17, 2022 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
Dr. Deb
G-d’s Hiddenness in Purim Reflects Ours By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
W
e emulate G-d. Or we are supposed to. We do that in a big way on Purim: G-d is hidden in the story, and we are generally hidden in our own stories. And when we hide from ourselves, we also have Hashem hidden, too. See, Hashem is in us; He breathed into us and gave us our neshama. But if we have lost contact with who we are – with the neshama within us – then in that process, we’ve also lost contact with G-d. That’s how we remain hidden from ourselves, and then G-d seems to have gone into hiding from us. He didn’t, actually. The path back to Him has to begin with uncovering our neshama, discovering who we are. I think that this is exactly why it says in Parshas Eikev, “Umaltem es orlas levovchem,” Circumcise the covering of your hearts. We can do it; but we definitely have no clue what the Torah is asking of us or how to even begin that process. In fact, most of us generally believe we do know who we are and who our family and friends are. I hear this a lot: “He’s a narcissist.” “She’s a bossy, controlling person.” “I admit I am a perfectionist.” “I have always been anxious.” “I’m shy.” “He’s a grump.” “I am socially awkward.” When you experience a personality trait within yourself or others so very often that you have trouble even recalling when it wasn’t there, you think it’s you. Except it really isn’t you at all. Or them.
How do I know that? Because the neshama we were given is who we really are. And you know that when Hashem implanted it within us it was not a narcissist, bossy, perfectionistic, anxious, shy, grumpy or socially awkward. Those are not qualities of the neshama. Those are qualities that we take on in life due to the demands of the context we are in. Rabbi Avi Zakotishky just said that last Shabbos, Parshas Vayikra. Why does it keep reminding us that when we were to give a korban, Hashem would enjoy its rayach, smell? The answer he said was that our pure neshama is undamaged, and we remind Hashem of that by referring to the one sense of ours that was not corrupted by Adam HaRishon. Our “sins,” he said, are mistakes, but not who we really are. So when that happens, have we changed? Do we turn into something else than what we started out with the day we were born? I think not. Because if we actually changed, G-d wouldn’t ask us to circumcise the cover on our hearts; it wouldn’t be possible.
So it must be that we actually are that bright, pure, golden, sparkling neshama that He first gave us. And it got hidden. So well hidden, in fact, that we don’t even know it’s there and wouldn’t recognize ourselves if we saw it. Yet, we are asked to find it – literally do a surgery to remove what is covering it. So that must mean the process can’t be easy and it might even involve a little pain. (Although they say the drop of wine given to the baby helps a bunch with the pain.) And if we don’t find it, if we don’t make some serious effort to search for it, we are faced with a potential holocaust. Because in Queen Esther’s day, the Jewish people were being set up for exactly that. It absolutely could have been the Moor Wars, the Spanish Inquisition, the Pogroms, or, indeed the Holocaust and terror attacks of our time. It wasn’t, but it could have been. Why am I making such a connection? When we Jews lose connection with who we are – which is how we lose connection with G-d –our downfall is immanent. Luckily, we
found ourselves when we were in the Purim happenings –just in the nick of time. But us, today? How do we uncover the covering on our hearts? How do we find out who our real Selves are if they aren’t actually a narcissist or a bipolar or a controlling person or any of the range of nasty labels that we put on ourselves and on our loved ones? How? And why does it matter, today, anyway? It matters because the lack of being who we are is precisely what’s keeping us from having loving, giving, relaxed, and happy relationships. What we must do – and yes, we must – is go through the process of identifying our “coverings” for our heart, what I’ve been calling here in this column, our “parts” and distinguishing those from our true neshama. Mind you, there is nothing wrong with having defenses. Our parts get us through meetings that we may find overwhelming at work, and they speak so intelligently for us, we’re surprised. Our parts get us up in the morning exactly on time, before the alarm goes off. Our parts tell us when someone’s behavior is not nice, and they may let us know of their anger. There’s nothing wrong with knowing there’s something to be angry about, for instance. But the trick is for our neshama, our higher Self, to use that information to settle the problem in a way that actually settles it instead of alienating the very people who we want to make changes. When two people have discovered who they really are and what parts they each have, a so-called argument
