Hide and Seek

 Ha’azinu

Deut. 32:1-52

 

Précis: The parasha, the shortest in the Five Books, includes a hymn sung by Moses​, who climbs a mountain to see the Promised Land he will not enter​. This is the last parasha read on Shabbat in the annual cycle: the final parasha (V’zot Habracha) is read on Simchat Torah.

 

Deut. 32:18, “God said: 'I will hide my countenance from them; and see how they fare in the end.'”

As noted by Rabbi Sari Laufer (10 Minutes of Torah, 9/30/24), this parasha is different from all others, since it is essentially a poem. While it is not a love poem, we can sense that it comes from a place of love. She cites a familiar Hasidic teaching of Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritch. Once he found a young child crying. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends,” the child explained, “and I hid so well that they stopped looking for me and went away.” Dov Ber mused, “This must be how God feels, hiding the Divine countenance from us to the point where some of us stop looking and start living our lives without God.”

This suggests that there is a crack, an opening, for us to “find” a God who remains hidden from us. Reading this parasha between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on Shabbat Shuvah comes at a theologically difficult time, when we repeatedly encounter God in the liturgy as Ruler and Judge. For many of us, these are not welcome images, given the errors which self-examination brings to light. It is especially difficult for those of us who observe the decidedly troubling world in which we live and wonder why it seems that God has been hiding like the child in the story. 

Part of our task during the Yamim Noraim is to find where our best selves have been hiding, and we do this through introspection, confession and prayer. If we find our “best selves” perhaps we are touching what has been made in the image of God. 

 

Kings

For Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer has written about the subject of divine kingship, a matter of considerable interest on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (Washington Post, 8/22/26).  Noting that this has been a year of crowds chanting “no kings” in American streets, we might examine the Jewish view of kings in general, and the view of God as King in particular. After all, during the High Holy Days, we acknowledge the kingship of God, including the famous prayer which begins “Avinu Malkeinu” — “Our Father, Our King.” 

To modern ears, the language of kings is threatening. This is not a modern phenomenon, since for more than 2,000 years, rabbinic interpreters felt a similar discomfort. In fact, the traditional rabbinic approach to God as King can be summed up simply: whatever you think a human king is, God is the opposite.

An old rabbinic tale suggests that before the world was created, God decided to make human beings, knowing full well that humanity would be an endless source of trouble. The Torah itself, acting as a kind of advisor, suggests that God can’t be a king in a vacuum, and God needs humans to rule. From the beginning, then, divine kingship is imagined as a two-way relationship.

This idea of a two-way relationship became central to Jewish tradition. A midrash about the creation of the prayer Avinu Malkeinu tells the story of concern during a drought. One rabbi, Eliezer, performed the entire formal prayer for rain. Nothing happened. Then a second famous sage, Rabbi Akiva, brought forward a much more daring plea: “Our Father, our King, we have no king but you; act for Your own sake, and have mercy on us.” The rain came.

Rabbi Akiva didn’t ask to be rescued for his own sake but reminded God that God, too, had something invested in the relationship. Akiva focused on two potent images: that of a father, whose bond with his child is unconditional, and that of a king, whose power is supreme. Put them together and you get the suggestion of something godlike: omnipotence attached to unconditional love.

We Americans are understandably wary of kings. On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it may seem strange to celebrate a king (even if it is God) during the most important Jewish holidays. But God’s kingship serves to highlight the insufficiency of any human king. God’s justice is a rebuke to every form of oppression. Well before crowds shouting “no kings” conflated kingship with tyranny, the rabbinic tradition proposed a radical idea: that the true king was the furthest thing from a tyrant. Rather than mistreating his people, he draws close to them. Instead of ignoring their distress, he looks on them with kindness and mercy.

That’s a strange kind of king. It might also be the only vision of power worthy of respect.