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I am experiencing serious FOMO.
I am fully bummed that I may be out of the vary on Monday to survey the photo voltaic eclipse.
So, let’s focus on Judaism and eclipses.
Are there eclipses in the Bible? Probably. It is imaginable that the plague of darkness at some point soon of the Exodus from Egypt used to be an entire eclipse of the solar. Likewise, when the solar stood mute in the e-book of Joshua, that furthermore would possibly presumably perhaps had been an eclipse. There are furthermore references to photo voltaic eclipses in medieval Jewish texts, in particular as they’ll even accept as true with influenced the calculation of the recent moon.
However, noteworthy more compelling is the premise that God is furthermore in eclipse. The time period for that is “hester panim,” the act of God concealing the Divine Presence as a approach of punishing the Jewish folks.
“The LORD stated to Moses: You would also be soon to lie along with your fathers. This folks will thereupon hotfoot off target after the alien gods in their midst, in the land that they are about to enter; they can forsake Me and destroy My covenant that I made with them. Then My anger will flare up against them, and I may abandon them and conceal My countenance from them. They would be ready prey; and loads of evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall notify on that day, “Without a doubt it is because our God is no longer in our midst that these evils accept as true with befallen us.” Yet I may withhold My countenance hidden on that day, as a result of total foul they’ve performed in turning to assorted gods” (Deut. 31: 16-18).
“You disregarded the Rock that begot you, forgot the God who introduced you forth. The LORD observed and used to be nervous, and spurned His sons and His daughters. He stated: I may disguise My countenance from them, and uncover how they fare in the tip. For they are a treacherous breed, kids with out a loyalty in them” (Deut. 32: 18-20).
So, sure: When God hides the Divine Presence, it is miles a punishment — a mark of divine anger, presumably even passive-aggressive, petulant habits.
To abilities the hidden Presence of God used to be to abilities gargantuan alarm and danger:
“How long, O LORD; will You ignore me without end? How long will You disguise Your face from me? How long will I surely accept as true with cares on my mind, effort in my heart all day? How long will my enemy accept as true with the upper hand? Peer at me, answer me, O LORD, my God! Restore the luster to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of loss of life; lest my enemy notify, “I surely accept as true with overcome him,” my foes exult when I totter” (Psalm 13: 2-5).
So, God is in eclipse. It is no longer that God is no longer there; it is merely(!) that we are going to no longer sense God’s presence. God is mute there; it is merely that God is no longer palpable.
It is awful — to without prolong abilities the hidden nature of God can sear itself into your eyes, and into your soul.
However, presumably, as a 12th-century French commentator (Noise Noise) taught: God hides the Divine Presence — no longer out of anger but because God can not endure to peek folks in inconvenience. It is an act of luxuriate in and compassion, no longer a punishment.
All of those texts accept as true with one thing in fashioned: God chose to veil the Divine Presence — both as a punishment for sin or because God can not tolerate the real fact of our suffering.
Let me provide one other, presumably more radical, answer.
In his song “Lover Lover Lover,” written at some point soon of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the slack singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen engages in a dialogue with God. He asks for God, the Lover, to return abet to him.
“Then let me originate up all over again,” I cried,
“please let me originate up all over again,
I desire a face that’s truthful this time,
I desire a spirit that is aloof.”
To which God responds:
“I never never grew to change into aside,” he stated,
“I never walked away.
It used to be you who built the temple,
it used to be you who covered up my face.”
God would no longer follow it the eclipse of God — neither as punishment nor as painful response to human suffering.
It is surely defective and violent human action that forces God into retreat — that contributes to the eclipse of the Divine Presence.
As I surely accept as true with learned from my pal and colleague, Rabbi Dennis Ross:
In a 1952 e-book by the identical title, the Jewish truth seeker Martin Buber likens the eclipse of God to an eclipse of the solar. In a photo voltaic eclipse, the moon passes between the earth and solar and the area grows gloomy and gray. In the future of an Eclipse of God, as at some point soon of the Holocaust, as an instance, folks behave in programs that invent it onerous, if no longer very no longer going, for God to be considered.
And, unlike a photo voltaic eclipse, that imagined disappearance of God is no longer non permanent. It has been going on for centuries. The biblical memoir is the story of God’s unhurried disappearance, as biblical student Richard Elliott Friedman assign it.
God is extremely most sleek in the Torah. As the biblical myth develops, God is increasingly still and decreasingly most sleek — unless we derive to the e-book of Esther, whose title itself appears to allude to the hester panim, the hidden nature of God. At last, as we attain the tip of the Hebrew Bible, Nehemiah can simplest hope that God will keep in mind him: “O my God, keep in mind me favorably for this, and enact no longer blot out the devotion I confirmed in direction of the Home of God and its attendants” (Nehemiah 13:14).
However, I inspect the unhurried disappearance of God in the Bible — and in human ancient past — no longer as a punishment, but as an replacement for human action.
However, right here is the finest info: a God Who hides is furthermore a God who would be realized.
Here is the higher info: The events of the most sleek past can even accept as true with forced the Divine Presence into eclipse, but there are signs that the Presence would be returning.
On story of oldsters are making it happen.
How? Thru a renewed sense of spirituality. That sense of renewal is no longer steadily recent; it is, in actual fact, rather worn. “Such is the circle of oldsters who turn to Him, Jacob, who survey Your presence” (Psalm 24:6).
How? For non secular Zionists, the institution of Jewish sovereignty in the Land — and, even and in particular, the struggles over the that formula of that energy — is a demonstration of the Divine Presence.
“They shall know that I the Lord am their GOD when, having exiled them amongst the worldwide locations, I win them abet into their land and hotfoot away none of them at the abet of. I will no longer ever all over again disguise My face from them, for I may pour out My spirit upon the Home of Israel — announces the Lord GOD” (Ezek. 39: 28-29).
The eclipse itself is a testimony to the cycles that again to the pure universe, the flowing of time and the attach of abode of the planets and orbs — all imagined, all in the mind of God — as intimated in the outlet phrases of Genesis.
You’ve bought your eclipse glasses, haven’t you?
In the phrases of Bruce Springsteen:
Mama continually advised me no longer to peek into the eyes of the sunBut mama, that’s where the stress-free is (“Blinded by the Gentle”).
