Purim: the avodah during hester panim

4 – Purim: the avodah during hester panim

Purim is the encounter with the world.

Emunah through hester panim

When we experience the miracle of Purim, we are engaging with the nature of the world itself. The world, by its very essence, is a place of hester panim, a realm of uncertainty and hiddenness. Our task is to navigate through this ambiguity, rather than attempting to escape it.

It is a mistake to think that emunah grants absolute clarity, removing all doubts and difficulties. Instead, emunah is the inner strength that allows us to confront darkness—whether in our personal lives or in history—without fear. It does not require us to explain away challenges or seek immediate answers. Rather, it gives us the resilience to stand firm, trusting that Hashem is guiding everything, even when His presence is not openly revealed. 

How Mordechai and Esther responded to hester panim

The phrase in Sefer Devarim 31:18 “Anochi hastir astir panay”  (I will surely hide my face) is often interpreted to mean that Hashem is always present, just hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be found if we look hard enough. But the Torah is not saying that at all. It is emphasizing that there will be complete darkness—a reality in which Hashem’s presence is entirely concealed.

Mordechai and Esther did not deny this darkness or try to explain it away. They fully accepted the disastrous nature of the situation. They responded not with immediate optimism, but with deep teshuva—fasting for three days and even uprooting Leil HaSeder.

Their emunah did not remove the darkness; rather, it gave them the strength to face it without breaking. They knew that Hashem was orchestrating all the events, even if they could not yet see it clearly. Their emunah was the certainty that through this trial, a deeper understanding and growth would emerge.

What our emunah needs to look like in the face of hester panim

A fundamental characteristic of our psychological makeup is that we abhor “gray areas.” Whenever we face a doubt or uncertainty, we often feel compelled to ask a rabbi for a definitive psak. 

We must fight against this ingrained nature of ours. Emunah educates us to be willing to navigate through the dark, challenging, and even tragic times. Through this avodah, we will emerge with a deeper revelation that transcends anything we could have imagined. We will find that the very journey through uncertainty leads to a profound understanding that we could never have reached through immediate answers.

Daas Tevunos in Siman 48 explains that this world is created with both tov and ra, making it fundamentally different from the upper realms. Unlike the perfect upper worlds, this world operates with a “new hanhaga,” one that includes hester panim—the concealment of Hashem’s presence.

Yet, he also teaches that despite this hester panim, Hashem still guides the world through a system of reflection. This means that even though our world contains ra, it mirrors the higher reality, which is entirely good and perfect. The question arises: How can a world that is “new and includes ra” still be considered a reflection of the pure upper world? [1] 

We can explain this with a simple analogy: When we blow into a puddle, the reflection on the water ripples and distorts until it disappears. However, when we blow into a person’s face, they remain unaffected and do not vanish. This illustrates the relationship between Olam Hazeh and the upper worlds. Olam Hazeh is a reflection of the true, perfected reality, but it is an unstable one—easily distorted by even the slightest disturbance. One little “ra” such as one little disturbance from a bad midda, can make the entire picture blurry and take it away. Shabbos is called “yom menucha” (a day of rest) and that’s when the puddle is clear and calm and we can see the full reflection. On Shabbos, we perceive clearly that we receive good from the Borei Olam! This is because on Shabbos Olam Hazeh is being experienced as a perfect reflection of the upper worlds. In other words, Hashem’s interactions with us on Shabbos are a straightforward and simple actualization of His desire to give good to us. 

However, during the week, when faced with hester panim, the reflection may disappear, but the source remains unchanged. The challenge of this world is to recognize that even when the reflection blurs, the original face is still there, guiding everything. Now we can understand that emunah doesn’t make the puddled and muddled reflection any clearer, rather emunah informs us that Hashem is the source of everything we experience.

Mordechai Hatzadik

Mordechai HaTzadik exemplified what it means to live in the gray area. Even though he had absolute emunah as illustrated in his statement in Megillas Esther 4:14:

 “Revach v’hatzala ya’amod laYehudim mimakom acher” ([Even if Esther does not act] Relief and salvation will arise for the Jews from another place.)

He did not simply reassure Klal Yisroel that everything would be fine. Instead, he responded to the reality of hester panim with serious avodah. He called for the Jews to fast for three days, even on Pesach, recognizing that the situation demanded urgent spiritual action. After everything, Mordechai and Esther looked “back” and did not see the reflection in the puddle anymore, but saw “the face itself!” i.e. a hanhaga which the “ra” itself can never disturb.

This is a revelation once a year on Purim, to see the guiding face which is not the reflection in the puddle. On Purim we see there is something going on which is completely unaffected by ra. 

Re-Understanding emunah and emunas chachamim

This truth cannot be revealed from the outset. The secular world assumes that the Torah provides immediate answers to everything, that emunah means having an explanation for every event. But in reality, emunah requires courage—it is the strength to face challenges without instant clarity, knowing that a revelation will come at the end.

Unfortunately, by adopting this mistaken approach, we are making a chillul Hashem. We treat emunah as a tool for quick answers, running to a talmid chacham for immediate psak on every doubt, expecting his words to make everything instantly clear. But true emunas chachamim is not about instant comprehension—it is the recognition that the chacham speaks truth at a higher level, and that full understanding may take years to develop.

Re-Understanding Bitachon

Our desire for clarity often leads us to seek bitachon as a way to escape uncertainty. Many mistakenly believe that true bitachon means Hashem will guarantee success in areas like parnassa, removing all doubt. However, this is a misunderstanding.

The real avodah is to embrace the hester panim and grow through it. It means recognizing, “I must dedicate my life to learning Torah, even though I do not know how my parnassa will work out.” This is very different from someone who assumes, “If I have bitachon, then I can learn Torah my whole life with absolute certainty that parnassa will be taken care of.” As we keep coming back to, true emunah and by extension, bitachon, is not about eliminating uncertainty—it is about having the strength to move forward despite it.

The very backbone of Avodah

At its core, what we are presenting here is the very backbone of avodah itself. The proper attitude toward avodah is recognizing that we are working through a grey, uncertain place. This is precisely why baalei mussar always feel that they are “at the beginning” of their avodah

A personal story applying this concept

Here is a personal story that illustrates this concept of avodah we are describing:

I hired someone to write a Haggadah in English based on my shiurim. Instead of micromanaging the process, I gave him the freedom to develop it on his own. Week after week, month after month, I continued paying him without demanding drafts or checking up on his progress. Had I insisted on overseeing every detail and ensuring he followed my exact script, I would have limited its potential. By relinquishing control and allowing the process to unfold, the final product turned out to be far greater than what I had initially envisioned. 

The above example brings home the concept that the emunah during hester panim is not a superficial grit or personality trait which we employ to push us through dark times, but rather our strength comes from a deep recognition that it is specifically through this journey that we will emerge with a much higher quality ruchniyus than we could ever have imagined. This is the very nature of avodah during hester panim and is precisely what I observed during the writing of my haggadah.

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[1]  Editor’s Note: This piece in Daas Tevunos is discussed in depth and brought in its entirety in the fourth Vaad in the Purim series entitled “04 – Purim: Emunah through Hester Panim.”