Hashem’s Time-Out

Everyone hates a cold shoulder. In fact, as upsetting as heated arguments can be, the piercing silence of disconnection is much more painful. 

However, sometimes there is just no choice but to put distance into a relationship. It can be a parent using a time-out with a child that is no longer responding to standard means of education and the last shred of patience has already been used up. It can be a teacher, when a child’s behavior has gone too far and the child is suspended from school for a few days. Or in a marriage, when the fighting has overwhelmed both sides and they retreat to their corners of the house, or even separate in hopes of recouping to see how to move forward with the relationship. The same goes for good friends who have a fight and don’t speak to each other for some time. 

However, taking a break from a relationship in whatever form is a very dangerous gamble. It is only to be used as a weapon of last resort. In order to be successful, both sides must know how much the other loves them.  

For instance, the child sent to his room must know that the parent is doing so out of love. Otherwise, the child will be convinced that the parent hates him and just wants to throw him as far away as possible – a feeling which is not so easily removed from the psyche, not even with loving words and gifts at other times. Hence, the parent can only use this tool if they are certain that the child knows how much they love him, and that the time out is coming from love and not hate or anger. 

The same is true of a separated couple. If they use the time to work on themselves, review their mistakes and start fixing them while in the “bubble” of separation as I discuss in The Garden of Emuna, then great love can be awakened in them specifically from the distance itself. They use that time to “reset” the relationship and can come together again totally like new, and even stronger than when they first married. But the separation itself can also become a slippery slope right into divorce, as so often happens. 

G-d Can Call a Time-Out, Too  

G-d is our loving Father in Heaven, and we are all His creations, and therefore, His children. And Hashem loves each and every one of us with an infinite love, many times more than a parent loves an only child. In fact, Hashem created the natural love of a parent for a child only in order for us to have an inkling of how much He loves us. 

Hashem also has a last resort fearsome tool called hester panim, literally “concealment of the face.”  This  means that Hashem hides Himself so to speak and makes it look like He isn’t there anymore, G-d forbid. For instance, in Megillat Esther G-d’s name is never mentioned. You can see His guiding hand clearly in the many miracles that happen through the story, but you must look for Him. This is no story of the Exodus with the sea splitting and miracles and wonders above nature happening at every turn! 

Hester panim is the most terrifying threat in the Torah. Our singular purpose and desire in this world are to connect to Hashem. In the Priestly Blessing, Bircat HaKohanim, the wish that Hashem will “show His face” is mentioned not once but twice. Therefore, the hardest thing to suffer is hester panim. 

Everything Comes from Love  

Hester panim is considered to be a curse and a punishment, a form of “putting distance” between Hashem and His people. 

But I am going to explain to you how hester panim is just a very powerful educational tool whose purpose is only to bring us, His children, closer! 

Hester panim is not Hashem telling us that He hates us and can’t stand us anymore – it’s actually the greatest revelation of Hashem’s love for us that there could possibly be!!! 

The Story of Purim  

The story of Purim comes during one of the greatest times of hester panim in the history of the Jewish people. The decree was to murder every single Jew – and Achashverosh’s Kingdom included  every single Jew alive on the planet. Even in the Holocaust, Hitler had power over a large percentage of the Jewish people, but not all of them. 

This decree came out of a series of punishments and rebukes of hundreds of years, dating all the way back to the time of the Prophets. Hashem had tried everything – threats of various enemies, the exile of the Ten Tribes, and even the destruction of the Holy Temple – and nothing had worked to get the Jewish people to truly repent the way they needed to. Hence, G-d used the strongest weapon He had in the arsenal – a total concealment and threat of annihilation that had never been seen in the world. 

However, Hashem always sends the cure before the illness. Even as He sent this terrible decree, He had also prepared Mordechai and Esther, two awesome, holy tzaddikim who knew not to be confused by anything. The Klausenberger Rebbe explains that when Esther sent clothes to Mordechai, she was essentially saying to him, “The way to cancel this decree is not with sackcloth and ashes, mourning and crying! Put in Shabbat clothes and dance in the street! Be happy and thank Hashem!” 

Esther was also warning Mordechai that to react with mourning was to put the Jews in even worse danger – the danger of forgetting that Hashem loves them and everything is for the best. If the Jews fall into despair and sadness, then they would be in even worse danger, because now Hashem would leave them altogether! But if they will strengthen themselves with emuna and happiness, just that alone could overturn the terrible decree. 

Where did she learn this from? From Mordechai himself! Rebbe Nachman explains that when the Megilla says that Mordechai would walk every day to where Esther was being held, it was in order to strengthen her spiritually, that she shouldn’t fall into despair. Hence, we see that it was Mordechai strengthening Esther through years of hester panim, alone in the palace filled with idols, that enabled Esther to become a pillar of strength and emuna, and bring about the turnaround that resulted in saving the entire Jewish people! 

History Repeats Itself  

So too in our days. The world is coursing with terrible decrees and suffering. Never before has the entire world been shaken to its foundations as it has been over the last year.  

We too must strengthen ourselves with the absolute knowledge – not just belief, but KNOWLEDGE – that Hashem loves always loves His children, and will never, ever do anything to hurt us! 

With this knowledge, we too can turn this dark situation and tremendous hester panim into the greatest light – the great light of the complete Redemption! 

Amen, speedily and in our days, literally!