Show me Yourself

Question: How do you translate the verse in the Torah, "haster astir es panai?"
Hester means concealment. The intensive "doubled form," one of God's favorites, takes a verb and intensifies its meaning by saying it twice, as in Deut: 'and it will be if you surely hearken (shamoah tishm'eu)," Or at the end of the song of ascents, "when God returns the captives we will be like dreamers" where he says, "he who is going and crying (haloch yelech, doubling the HL"Ch root)," meaning going with angst or intensely. And then in the next verse, "bo yavo," "he will surely come carrying his sheaves." This is literally translated, "come he shall come."

But I don't want to translate it as, "surely" because I keep thinking about that stupid joke from the movie, "Airplane," where one guy says, "Surely youre joking!!" and the other answers, "no I'm serious, and my name isn't Shirley." Yuk Yuk.


So what is the best way to translate, "haster astir es panai?"

"Hide will I Hide My face ..."

I will mammash hide My face ....

I will really really hide my face ....

I will hide my face to the max ....

None of the above .....

This has to do with the discoure of the Rebbe of Radzin in his work, Sod Yesharim, Parshas Lech L'cha. At the end of the discours, (in the previous post,) he talks about intense levety. Actually its more than that. Its scoffing and deriding the Torah and its followers ostensibly in order to entertain one's peers or even one's self. As a former clown (I am an old professor of goofing off,) well, not so former, this subject is close to home. As a kid, it became clear that making others laugh was not just a special gift that was prized at school and in the culture at large, but it was a power and a way to wield power. It was also a great way to hide from the world which I had determined was a nasty place. So lets roll up our sleeves and get into one of the deadliest subjects on the face of the planet, the "Theology of Humor."

In the last post I translated the following:

(King Solomon wrote in Misheli (proverbs), “(If you have been wise, you have been wise for yourself,) and if you are scoffer, you alone will bare it.” This is a case where a man holds on to concealment and amnesia. Scoffing (leitsanus in Hebrew) is the garment of concealment, where God’s light is not seen. The AriZal Calls it, “batei Elokim” (houses of Elokim - or a second outer shell which surrounds concealment. This is about as far as man can seem to be from God.) The powers that God dressed in the garments of creation are called “Elokim.” There are 120 permutations of the five letters of “Elokim.” The power of kedushah reaches as low as these levels, where God’s light may still be perceived. The garments where God’s light may not be seen are called, “Elohim acherim,” or false Gods. Wherever Gods light may not be seen is not “in the power of kedushah.” Even though God created all of the powers, as it is written (Isaiah,54), “I created a destroyer to destroy.” True, man must remove all of these garments, and illuminate the darkness, and when the light reaches so low, he will see how all is from God.

The doubled or intensive grammatical form in the Torah is not just a way to say, "surely," or "really." The classical commentaries, and "drashos" of the great Rabbis often explain a point about the repetition, or two levels, in order to show how there are two things going on, and this is hinted at in the repetition of the word. So God hides in the world He created. Take food, for instance. Once you have finnished the graduate seminar in Advanced Spiritual States, mazal Tov, you are now one of the cognoscenti, (and dont think for a Jerusalem second that just because I am scoffing at the Universities now by using what MW describes as "obsolete itallian," that this idea is also obsolete.) YOU KNOW that whenever you eat, God is sustaining you through the nutrients in the food. If you are a materialist, or as you might say, "the living dead," then you will say, "its chemical compounds sustaning an organism." But this would be shallow. How does something grow, how does a living organism live? No one really knows, but since we are alive, and life must be sustained somehow, so we see how, "God sustains all." We call the life force, "God's energy or soul." It is not God, God is hidden. The force which sustains life is an emanation flowing out of the source of all existence we call "God."


God's power or the soul that emanates from the source is hidden in the food we eat.

This is one level of concealment. The "Houses of Elokim" mentioned in the above quotation, based on the AriZal, Rav Luria, of blessed memory, are the second level of concealment, where not only is the Godly power concealed, but the living dead who poke fun at such ideas, with a hearty rotgreen laugh, are using their antagonism in the form of humor to deny it, that is to say, conceal it even further. Elokim equals 86 in jewish numerology. so does the word for "the nature," or HaTeva. The meaning is, "God hides in nature." This is Elokim. Scoffers (Leitsanim) conceal it even further. This is why God sighs in heaven, He who has no form, Raises His mighty arm that brough us out of Egypt, now used not as a sign of strenght but "netilas yadaim," or a sign of surrender, and says, "Hide I will hide my face when the clowns among you deride my Torah and my people." The study of Chassidus, in particular, the Chassidus of Isbitz-Radzin, is a way to console God, "NAchamu, Nachamu Ami." God is saying, console me that I have to hide my face in order for you to get credit for your belief and efforts in My service, and console me a second time when I hide my face in Divine shame because my creations insult Me. But I will be silent and thereby achieve atonement for having to be hidden at all. Chassidus is a path that breaks down the wall.

Once upon a time, the Maggid of Mezerich, Rav Dov Baer, was in his kitchen, and heard his little boy crying from inside a cabinet. He opened the door, and underneath a blanket, found his five year old boy sobbing. He picked him up in his arms and said, "my son, why are you crying? Why are you hiding in the cabinet?" "Father, we were playing hide and go seek. I hid here in the kitchen, and I hid so well, that the other boys gave up and stopped looking for me. I have been in here for an hour, Tatee, and they went to play somewhere else."

Tears started streaming down the Maggids cheeks. He cried and said,"Master of Heaven and Earth! Do you see what You have done! You have hidden your face from us. You hid yourself so well that your children have stopped even trying to find you. You have hidden Yourself so well that they have not only stopped looking for you, but they have forgotten that You are even there!"

Let me hear Your voice, let me see Your form,
for Your form is lovely ....