For us, contemporaries and survivors of history’s most terrible
horrors, it is impossible to meditate about the compassion of
God without asking: Where is God?
      Emblazoned over the gates of the world in which we live is
the escutcheon of the demons. The mark of Cain on the face
of humanity has come to overshadow the likeness of God. There
has never been so much distress, agony and terror. It is often
sinful for the sun to shine. At no time has the earth been so
soaked with blood. Fellow-humans have turned out to be evil
spirits, monstrous and weird. Does not history look like a stage
for the dance of might and evil—with humanity’s wits too feeble
to separate the two and God either directing the play or indif-
ferent to it?
      The major folly of this view seems to lie in its shifting the
responsibility for humanity’s plight from the human to God, in accusing
the Invisible though iniquity is ours. Rather than admit our
own guilt, we seek, like Adam, to shift the blame upon some-
one else. For generations we have been investing life with
ugliness and now we wonder why we do not succeed. God
was thought of as a watchman hired to prevent us from using
our loaded guns. Having failed us in this, God is now thought
of as the ultimate Scapegoat.
      We live in an age when most of us have ceased to be shocked
by the increasing breakdown in moral inhibitions. The decay
of conscience fills the air with a pungent smell. Good and evil,
which were once as distinguishable as day and night, have
become a blurred mist. But that mist is human-made. God is not
silent. God has been silenced.
      Instead of being taught to answer the direct commands of
God with a conscience open to God’s will, humans are fed on the
sweetness of mythology, on promises of salvation and immor-
tality as a dessert to the pleasant repast on earth. The faith
believers cherish is second hand: it is a faith in the miracles of
the past, an attachment to symbols and ceremonies. God is
known from hearsay, a rumor fostered by dogmas, and even
non-dogmatic thinkers offer hackneyed, solemn concepts
without daring to cry out the startling vision of the sublime
on the margin of which indecisions, doubts, are almost vile.
      We have trifled with the name of God. We have taken
ideals in vain, preached and eluded God, praised and defied
God. Now we reap the fruits of failure. Through centuries
God’s voice cried in the wilderness. How skillfully it was trapped
and imprisoned in the temples! How thoroughly distorted!
Now we behold how it gradually withdraws, abandoning one
people after another, departing from their souls, despising their
wisdom. The taste for goodness has all but gone from the
earth.
      We have witnessed in history how often a person, a group or
a nation, lost from the sight of God, acts and succeeds, strives
and achieves, but is given up by God. They may stride from 
one victory to another and yet they are done with and aban-
doned, renounced and cast aside. They may possess all glory
and might, but their life will be dismal. God has withdrawn
from their life, even while they are heaping wickedness upon
cruelty and malice upon evil. The dismissal of humanity, the abro-
gation of Providence, inaugurates eventual calamity.
      They are left alone, neither molested by punishment nor
assured by indication of help. The divine does not interfere
with their actions nor intervene in their conscience. Having all
in abundance save God’s blessing, they find their wealth a
shell in which there is curse without mercy.
      The human was the first to hide themself from God after having
eaten of the forbidden fruit, and is still hiding. The will of
God is to be here, manifest and near; but when the doors of
this world are slammed on God, God’s truth betrayed, God’s will
defied, God withdraws, leaving humanity to itself. God did not
depart of God’s own volition; God was expelled. God is in exile.
      More grave than Adam’s eating the forbidden fruit was the
hiding from God after the eating it. “Where art thou?”
Where is humanity? is the first question that occurs in the Bible. It
is a human’s alibi that is our problem. It is a human who hides, who
flees, who has an alibi. God is less rare than we think; when
we long for God, God’s distance crumbles away.
      The prophets do not speak of the hidden God but of the
hiding God. God’s hiding is a function not God’s essence, an act
not a permanent state. It is when the people forsake God,
breaking the Covenant which God has made with them, that
God forsakes them and hides God’s face from them. It is not
God who is obscure. It is humanity who conceals God. God’s hiding
from us is not in God’s essence: “Verily Thou art a God that
hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Savior!” (Isaiah 45:15)
A hiding God, not a hidden God. God is waiting to be disclosed,
to be admitted into our lives.
      The direct effect of God’s hiding is the hardening of the con-
science: a person hears but does not understand, sees but does not
perceive—their heart fat, their ears heavy. Our task is to open
our souls to God, to let God again enter our deeds. We have 
been taught the grammar of contact with God, we have been  
taught by the Baal Shem that God’s remoteness is an illusion
capable of being dispelled by our faith. There are many doors
through which we have to pass in order to enter the palace,
and none of them is locked. 
      As the hiding of humanity is known to God and seen through,
so is God’s hiding seen through. In sensing the fact of God’s
hiding we have disclosed God. Life is a hiding place for God.
We are never asunder from God who is in need of us. Nations
roam and rave—but all this is only ruffling the deep, unnoticed
and uncherished stillness.
      The grandchild of Rabbi Baruch was playing hide-and-seek
with another boy. He hid himself and stayed in his hiding
place for a long time, assuming that his friend would look for
him. Finally, he went out and saw that his friend was gone,
apparently not having looked for him at all, and that his own
hiding had been in vain. He ran into the study of his grand-
father, crying and complaining about his friend. Upon hearing
the story, Rabbi Baruch broke into tears and said: "God, too,"
says: ‘I hide, but there is no one to look for me.’"
      There are times when defeat is all we face, when horror is
all that faith must bear. And yet, in spite of anguish, in spite of
terror we are never overcome with ultimate dismay. “Even
that it would please God to destroy me; that God would let
loose God’s hand and cut me off, then should I yet have comfort,
yea, I would exult even in my pain; let God not spare me, for
I have not denied the words of the holy One.” (Job 6:9-10).
Wells gush forth in the deserts of despair. This is the guidance
of faith: “Lie in the dust and gorge on faith.” 
(Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk in paraphrasing Psalm 37:3)
      We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told
us, what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old.
      How Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand,
and plantedst them; how Thou didst afflict the people, and
cast them out.
      For they got not the land in possession by their own sword,
neither did their own arm save them: but Thy right hand,
and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because
Thou hadst a favor unto them.
      Thou art my king, O God, command deliverances for
Jacob.
      Through Thee we will push down our enemies: through
Thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us.
      For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save
me.
      But Thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them
to shame that hated us.
      In God we boast all the day long: and praise thy name for
ever. Selah.
      But Thou hast cast off, and put us to shame, and goest not
forth with our armies.
      Thou makest us to turn back from the enemy: and they
which hate us spoil for themselves.
      Thou has given us like sheep appointed for meat: and hast
scattered us among the heathen.
      Thou sellest thy people for nought, and dost not increase
Thy wealth by their price.
      Thou makest a reproach to our neighbors, a scorn and
a derision to them that are round about us.
      Thou makest us a by-word among the heathen, a shaking of
the head among the people.
      My confusion is continually before me, and the shame of
my face hath covered me:
      For the voice of him that reproacheth and blasphemeth, by
reason of the enemy and avenger.
      All this is come upon us; yet have we not forgotten Thee:
neither have we dealt falsely in Thy covenant.
      Our heart is not turned back, neither have our steps de-
clined from Thy way.
      Though Thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons,
and covered us with the shadow of death.
      If we have forgotten the name of our God, or stretched out
our hands to a strange god:
      Shall not God search this out? for God knoweth the secrets
of the heart.
      Yea, for Thy sake are we killed all the day long: we are
counted as sheep for the slaughter.
      Awake, why sleepest Thou, O Lord? arise, cast us not off
for ever.
      Wherefore hidest Thou Thy face? and forgettest our afflic-
tion, and our oppression?
      For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our belly cleaveth
unto the earth.
      Arise for our help, and redeem us for Thy mercies sake.
                                                           (Psalm 44)