Hide and Seek with the Shekhinah: Thoughts for Purim and Beyond

Babies love to play peekaboo, as a parent or caregiver hides their face for a moment and then pops out again to the baby’s delight. At six to twelve months, infants are developing “object permanence,” the crucial concept that just because someone or something isn’t visible at the moment, it’s still there and can still be counted on.

Some of the most important things in life are hidden from view: stars in the daytime, a baby in the womb, life under the sea. There are sounds hidden from us in frequencies humans can’t hear, and wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the range of the naked eye. We still can’t read each other’s hidden thoughts, and each person contains dimensions unknown even to themselves. Believers will say that God, too, can’t be seen in conventional ways, but can be perceived in the heart.

I’ve been thinking about things that are hidden, while preparing to celebrate the holiday of Purim , which is a commentary on divine hiddenness in human affairs.

Set in ancient Persia, the Biblical book of Esther tells the story of a young Jewish woman, Queen Esther, saving her people from a genocidal plot by an antisemitic court official. The Purim story conveys a message of Jewish survival and resilience in the face of hatred and prejudice. I know it sounds solemn, but it’s celebrated with a joyful, carnival-type atmosphere of costumes, humor, noisemakers and eating special triangle-shaped pastries called hamantaschen.

Jewish sages long ago noticed that Esther’s name is related to the Hebrew word for “hiddenness.” For one thing, Esther hid her identity when she first married the king. On a deeper level, Hester Panim, hiding the divine face, is a Hebrew expression for times when God seems distant, as in the book of Esther, where God is never mentioned directly. Yet at that very time, God was believed to be hidden behind the scenes, working through the agency and courage of human beings. Wearing masks and costumes on the Purim holiday playfully reinforces this theme of “hiddenness.”

Esther is also symbolized by the moon, because she brought light and gladness to the people. The Moon is a beloved symbol in Jewish tradition, which has a lunar-solar calendar. Celebrating the new moon, Rosh Hodesh, has been revived as a modern Jewish spiritual practice. The moon “hides its face” for part of every month, growing in fullness – and is full in time for Purim.

Queen Esther, like the Moon itself, is associated in Jewish mysticism with the Shechinah, the feminine Divine Presence immanent in the world and in nature. We don’t have to transcend this world to find divinity. She is here right now, “hiding” within in each tree, pond, and creature. When he saw a glorious view in nature, my teacher Reb Zalman, would wink and say, “The Shekhinah is flashing us.” The divine presence in the natural world is revealed in moments of awe, but for the patient and observant it is there all the time, playing holy hide and seek, wearing the kaleidoscopic mask of creation.

New Moon and Venus, March, 2025

Esther was also compared to Venus, seen in this photo with the new moon.

Rabbi Neḥemya concurs and says: Hadassah was her real name. Why then was she called Esther? This was her non-Hebrew name, for owing to her beauty the nations of the world called her after Istahar, Venus. (Talmud: Megillah 13a)

When the news is dark, when the divine presence may seem very hidden in events, I think that a remedy is to seek the face-to-face, to find it in nature and in direct human connections. How do you find presence in times of hiddenness?

My photographs. This post also appeared on my Substack: GPS for Your Inner Landscape.