Even before the wet market and the outbreak and our collective gasp for breath, some appreciated the power of simple direct causation: “Vote Republican and my grandmother will die.” “Drive your car, and everyone will die.” “Teach that in schools, and everyone will die.” Death truly is the last refuge of the scoundrel and should be denied to him at all costs. Every personal and political decision in history has killed thousands, surely, and what we could have, should have done to preempt this Coronavirus is no different. But I am not going to the effort of putting pen to paper merely to laugh at consequentialist morality (an act, surely, that will eliminate some rare species of botfly from the heart of the Congo, etc.)—there is G·dliness to contemplate! (Animal soul: “Booo!” Me: “Can it, Sheldon!”)

The question is a simple one: To what extent does COVID-19 control G·d, and to what extent does G·d control it? We once discussed this in terms of Purim, the lottery, His face concealed and revealed in the nature of the day. The point, however, is profound enough, central enough to the difference between a G·dly and unG·dly life, to deserve a lifetime of contemplation (perhaps in this way we can fulfill the facet of divine worship called Mesiras Nefesh, self-sacrifice for G·d). Let us attack the question from a different angle called Hashgacha Pratis, individual divine providence, and the way Chassidic teachings transform the concept.

Individual divine providence means that G·d is actively involved in the universe at the level of each creation. It is a Jewish doctrine transformed by the innovation (revelation) of Rabbi Yisrael Baal Shem Tov, the Holy BeSh”T, a theological radical in all the best ways. It also, like many other principles of Chassidus (“G·d is everywhere” is another), is the way a typical eight-year-old in Hebrew school understands G·d. This childlike perspective is no accident. The simplicity of a simple Jew touches the simplicity of the Creator. But it would be a mistake to call the BeShT’s theology childish. It is nothing short of revolutionary:

Divine providence has historically been denied even by those who believe that G·d created the world from nothing. These are the deists and their ilk (in the straightforward reading) to whom the Alter Rebbe rebuts in the 2^nd chapter of the 2^nd part of the Tanya. Like other idolatry-adjacent beliefs, Deism derives from bad philosophy rather than simplemindedness. Because they imagine G·d can only cause effects through a close relationship with those effects (a limitation that only pertains to finite creations), they think divine involvement in His world contradicts His simplicity. They believe G·d abandoned the earth and is merely the ‘G·d of gods,’ the ultimate cause beyond, and today uninvolved in, nature. The response to this position, as the Alter Rebbe writes at length, is that creating something from nothing, on the contrary, necessitates the constant involvement of the Creator.

Jewish sages and rabbis, of course, have never denied G·d’s constant involvement in the creation, G·d forbid, just as all Jewish sages maintain that there is perfect and total divine knowledge. The debate has always centered around the extent and nature of G·d’s involvement in what He knows. Before the holy BeSh”T, some, like the Rambam, explained divine providence to rest only on individual people, but over all other species only in general. Per this view, G·d does not decree whether a specific fish should live or die, only that the species as a whole should survive, because it is only the species as a whole that is central to His plan. If the life of a single animal becomes a human concern, e.g., the peddler’s donkey dies and he suddenly has no more means of making a living, only then is G·d concerned with the individual animal. Even these sages seem to agree that the “chance circumstance” which rules over the lives of non-human creations is itself a decree of G·d, just as G·d decrees that human beings should have free choice. He decrees, in other words, that here something else should decree.

Opinions also vary as to whether there is divine providence over human beings equally. The Rambam in his Moreh Nevuchim (The Guide for the Perplexed) says providence is a function of the intellectual bond between man and G·d. Thus fools and evildoers are separate from total providence and left to some extent in the hands of nature just like other species.

The Chassidic doctrine of individual divine providence first introduced by the Baal Shem Tov is genuinely original, at least among the stated opinions and known philosophies of the Torah that have reached us. Although previous Jewish sages strongly support both G·d’s omniscience and, possibly, His constant creation of the universe, the holy Baal Shem Tov came and revealed a new light, a new facet of the Truth. G·d is involved in every aspect of the creation, and every aspect of the creation contributes to His plan for the entire universe.

In the Baal Shem Tov’s world, there is no room for chance.

But what if we are not stones or donkeys or even wicked fools? What if we are righteous, deserving of individual divine providence according to all Jewish opinions? Is there any innovation, then, in the Baal Shem Tov’s light?

A further wrinkle: Hashgacha, divine providence, as so far discussed, is a doctrine drawing G·d closer to mundane worldly realities; hence the Rabbinic hesitation to embrace it fully, for fear of contradicting His simplicity, His transcendent perfection. Providence, in other words, means G·d is involved even where He’s not expected, in the affairs and logic of finite and worldly things. But a Jew intertwined with Torah and Mitzvos, with the divine Wisdom and Will—what use does this Jew have for providence? The Creator shows Himself openly and directly in their G-dly affairs, within their holy pursuits! Per the sages before the Baal Shem Tov, providence is needed specifically where it will not go, to the mundane and the separate. And even the BeSh”T, who says there is providence for sinners, does not seem to explain why the non-sinners need it. A saint, a holy Tzaddik, does not need G·d’s hidden machinations; his very soul is a revealed instrument for the divine!

Which makes it strange to read the words of the Rebbe Rayatz. The 6^th Rebbe of the Lubavitch dynasty, R’Yosef Yitzchak, a leader of the Jewish people whose very life was the Jewish practice and education he spread under the deadly watch of Stalin and the KGB makes a remarkable statement about his imprisonment, torture, and commuted death sentence in 1927. He says that if it had not been for his discussion of the Baal Shem Tov’s doctrine of individual divine providence in the discourses of Rosh Hashana of that year (תרפ”ז), he would not have had the strength to withstand his imprisonment.

To which, three questions:

(1) Every Rabbinical opinion we know would agree that the Rebbe, a saintly Jew who gives his whole life to the service of G·d and the Jewish people, experiences individual divine providence. So why was it the Baal Shem Tov’s doctrine, precisely, that gave him strength?

(2) Why is divine involvement in private affairs even relevant in this case? The Rebbe’s entire existence is a public devotion to the betterment of the Jewish people and the furtherance of G·d’s Will and Wisdom on earth. His life is inseparable from G·d, regardless of G·d’s involvement in mundane worldly affairs.

(3) Even if we wish to propose that the benefit of his contemplation of providence is finding G·dliness even in his enemies and imprisonment, why is providence the object of his thought? The heartening concept that finds G·d even in terrible oppression is “everything that comes from G·d is good”! Hashgacha Pratis, individual divine providence, merely says that G·d is involved, not that the bad is good. Under providence alone, we might say that G·d is involved in the thing, but it is indeed a harsh punishment or a bitter exile!

Indeed, there is an implicit tension between questions (2) and (3). If the Rebbe Rayatz’s whole life is one with public service in matters of Torah and Mitzvos, if his entire being is about G·d and not about himself, why would the apparent evil of his enemies and imprisonment bother him at all? We are speaking of a saintly Tzaddik who risked his life day after day to serve the Jewish people. The holy Rebbe had little concern for his wellbeing in a state of literal self-sacrifice. He was like the holy Rabbi Zushya of Annipoli, who said to the student sent by the Maggid to learn from him how to accept suffering with joy, “I lack nothing and have never suffered!” Such souls do not feel difficulty, do not feel pain, do not feel stress. Why does the Rebbe need to contemplate individual divine providence in the first place? On the contrary, like Rabbi Akiva, a Rebbe is grateful for the opportunity to give up his life for G·d!

Rabbi Akiva, however, who yearned for self-sacrifice and even to die for the sanctification of G·d’s name, is not the only Jewish path. Avraham, Abraham, our father, did not seek out self-sacrifice. His total devotion to G·d expressed in the spreading of monotheism. If this devotion called for self-sacrifice, he was willing to give up anything (indeed, even his divine mission itself, which is the secret of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac), but he did not seek it out. Thus, when Abraham sat in prison, he would not have enjoyed it. It would have been an interruption to his life’s mission of spreading the worship of the One G·d.

Thus, the Rebbe’s pain is like Abraham’s pain. The existence of a holy Jew is one devoted to G·d and others and especially to connecting others with G·d. In this mission, the personal risk or threat of bodily harm concerns the Tzaddik not in the least. (And here, the FIRST LESSON: to focus on helping others in the time of crisis will lessen our pain.) The righteous Jew is instead pained that his self-sacrifice might interrupt his holy work, might imprison them where they are unable to carry out G·d’s Will (here, a SECOND LESSON: where we can do G·d’s Will, we are free). It does no good, either, to say that because the Rebbe is now in prison, being in prison is now G·d’s Will. A Rebbe is not G·d’s employee, merely contributing to the cause to the best of his ability. The Rebbe, the Jew, is co-owner of the enterprise. Owners are in it for the result, and no to absolve themselves of responsibility. If the Rebbe is sitting in prison, he may not be guilty for his inability to spread G·dliness, but it still hurts.

Facing a global pandemic, and at any other time, there are two types of souls, each with its distinct mission. One gives itself over to fulfilling the task to the very end, no matter the coast, but in the end, once all effort has been expended, it feels no pain. All is by G·d’s design. He planned and expected the whole story, not just my part, but whether the thing will succeed at all—so why should I worry? So do faith in G·d, and the faithful execution of my responsibility, make for peace of mind.

Then there is the Jew who cannot rest, who is so bound up with G·d that G·d’s Will is his will. The Jew does not serve than then wash his hands. The Jew is a piece of G·d; G·d’s concerns are not merely his mission but his entire being. Never mind what G·d expects of me—what does G·d want beyond my responsibility? The job is on pause. It hurts.

(We see it in the story of the Rebbe Rayatz’s father, the Rebbe Rashab, in Petersburg, at a rabbinical council. He witnessed the Tsar’s ministers attempt to coerce the gathered Rabbis, with the threat of pogroms, to agree to secular education for all Jewish children. The Rebbe spoke so vociferously against the idea that he fainted, and his words were so pointed he was placed under house arrest. Once the Rebbe was freed, one of his rabbinic colleagues came to visit and found him weeping. The Rabbi asked, “Lubavitcher Rebbe, why are you crying? We have done everything we could do!”

The Rebbe replied, “But we still haven’t accomplished it…”)

Those with no faith, who do not believe G·d controls our affairs and whose lives are egocentric, feel pain when the crisis exceeds their ability and expectation. Those with faith whose lives are devoted to G·d in the selfless pursuit of the mission and who know G·d’s total control of all things feel peace. But those with faith, who know G·d controls our affairs, but for whom G·d’s mission is their very self—the crisis causes them pain, not because they are pained but because G·d is pained. They do not say, “G·d has other messengers to accomplish the mission.” Such false humility has no place in the inner spark of G·d that knows if its assistance were unnecessary it would never have been brought into being.

Thus, the THIRD LESSON: Pain in the faith of the crisis does not necessarily reflect a lack of faith. If we feel the pain, we should make it that pain that, as the Rebbe Rayatz says, the Baal Shem Tov’s doctrine of individual divine providence can heal.

As every chassid knows and rushes to explain, the descent is for the sake of an ascent. The concealment of G·d is that He may reveal Himself further. The essence of “Cursed is Haman” is “Blessed is Mordechai.” Moses doesn’t enter the land and passes away in the desert so that Moses’ work may become the possession of the entire nation. The darkness exists for the sake of greater light.

And yet, the darkness is still darkness. Jail time is by definition time spent not spreading G·dliness or helping Jews, despite all the inspiration that may eventually come from it. The virus is a killer and a terror, even though so much good might emerge from it. That’s why it still hurts. That’s how it yet, in its way, has control, yet denies G·d.

Unless you believe the Baal Shem Tov. The holy BeSh”T says that not only is every detail of the creation in G·d’s control, but every particular fulfills G·d’s purpose for the entire universe.

What is critical, in other words, is not that the BeSh”T extends individual providence to every detail of every creation. What matters is why. Until the Baal Shem Tov, divine providence was a hierarchy. The Rambam says individual providence is a function of the extent to which something understands G·d. The righteous have more providence, the wicked less. The enlightened more, the benighted less, a rock none in particular, for it knows nothing of G·d intellectually. A virus is more rock than a human being…Comes the holy Baal Shem Tov and reveals: Not only is every detail of each thing from G·d. Not only is it all by G·d’s plan in general. But each creation itself fulfills His general plan for the entire creation.

The Baal Shem Tov is no longer talking about G·d’s plan and the human being, as not-G·d, dealing with it, being at peace with it or feeling pain because it’s on hold and we are helpless. The Baal Shem Tov’s divine providence, at the fiery heart of Chassidus, is that there is nothing to fear but G·d alone because there’s nothing but G·d alone. The BeSh”T says if we have no pain but G·d’s, then there is no pain anywhere, for G·d’s will is everywhere fulfilled and nowhere unfulfilled. Light has no privilege, is no speedier or more direct a fulfillment of G·d’s plan, than darkness. The Rebbe remembers this and thereby makes from his imprisonment itself a G·dly perfection. The Soviets themselves decided to set him free. G·dliness did not merely emerge from the dark. The dark was G·dly and did not have to become light to be so.

The FOURTH LESSON: There is no despair in this world. G·d is not merely its Creator, not only deeply involved in it but equally present in all aspects of all creations beyond by our understanding of their natures.

Those who have not yet tasted the taste of Torah think that effects derive from comprehensible causes. In the crisis, they are either crushed (if wrong) or arrogant (if right). Until the Baal Shem Tov, those who made their will G·d’s will knew that their lives were the effect of an incomprehensible Cause, but the effects themselves were still comprehensible; dark is dark, no matter the light that emerges from it. The BeSh”T reveals that you understand the darkness as little as you know G·d because the darkness is just as immediate to G·d’s unfolding plan as the light, a direct and necessary fulfillment of His purpose for the entire universe. What you think darkness and light mean, they do not mean…

This freeing ignorance, this relinquishing of judgment, this disappearance of contradictions to G·d’s plan—this is the real freedom. We do not and cannot know what the virus is; all we can know is that it cannot contradict G·d’s highest and deepest intentions, any more than a thing can hide behind itself. The Creator is just as concealed by the virus as He was by the status quo ante. Whence despair?

We are bound up in the life of the living G·d. We have a mission. Nothing stands in our way. Let us proceed, without delay, to the immediate and complete redemption, when these truths will be as common and straightforward as a sour headline.

Based on the Rebbe’s renowned letter on Hashgacha Pratis, Igros Kodesh vol. I p.168ff and the Rebbe’s sicha for the 12^th of Tammuz, Likkutei Sichos vol. XXIII p.157ff.

The pain, the disappointment, the terror, when life makes no sense. Our role models who do real good turn out to do real evil as well. A people whom G·d has chosen to serve Him until the end of time is split over the nature of their terrible enemies. New diseases spread like wildfire, showing little concern for whether their victims are good or bad people. A world of madness, a lawless jungle whose only logic is power and whose only wise men are mad, nihilists, or hermits.

That’s why Purim is the holiday. There, the Jewish people in exile, cradling in their arms the shattered vessel of their faith, Babylon ascendant, then Persia. Look at their sages, dying embers with no land and no Judaism structured to last without a temple. The most powerful sober man in the civilized world is a descendant of the king of the Israelites’ greatest historical enemy, the one their king failed to kill. Economists and pedants say with great authority: The Jews (as they are now called) have no future in Persia; their prophets were mistaken; their G·d has forsaken them. End of the road.

“All the finite worldly things on which I have mentally and emotionally come to rely turn out to have been playthings in the wheel of chance!”

“The logics with which I have tended the garden to turn fate to my favor have been maliciously upended. I am being laughed at!”

“There is no G·d! We are but cockroaches in the wheel wells of a car heading down a ravine with no driver at the wheel!”

“It turns out I’ve been sating my inner emptiness with little puzzles as a chaotic jungle churns all around, and now it has stepped on my toys!”

This is our exile. Our exile has always been so sunny, so fair, so brimming with the rational possibility of our survival. But Purim is THE holiday because it’s the holiday of exile, and Purim is no mere survival. The Jews in Egypt toiling endless aimless labor were surviving. Purim is redemption. Purim is joy in that place of pain, disappointment, and terror. In the place that makes no sense.

The only interludes in the exile, the only times Purim no longer seems vital, are when we are so inured to the darkness it no longer seems dark. When we turn as those Jews did to Achashverosh, name some small realm of the senseless dark a dependable salvation, and settle for a partial explanation of some whorl in the vast churning unknowable. We make it first and worship it. This stage is called “prelude to Haman,” and Purim will again be demanded soon enough.

We have called senselessness the sign of exile. Knowing, logic, sense — a fitting in, a connection, each thing arrives at its place among the other things as Adam knows Eve. But Purim is not the apparent solution to exile, its opposite, that is, enlightenment, knowing.

Purim — to not know, to lose that place among things, to be blind to their interlocking:

“One is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim until one doesn’t know the difference between ‘Cursed is Haman’ and ‘Blessed is Mordechai’.”

Talmud, Megillah 7b

Some authorities in Jewish law say that the comparison is mathematical, that it is no mere coincidence that the Hebrew terms ‘Blessed is Mordechai’ and ‘Cursed is Haman’ have the same numeric value in the Gematria. Thus, the Talmud is saying you have to drink wine on Purim until you can no longer reckon this mathematical equality. But (aside from not fitting the words well—you are not then drinking until you don’t know the difference but rather until you don’t know the equality) there is more to not know about Haman and Mordechai than the mere math of the thing.

Esther, the heroine queen who lends her name to the whole story (Megillas Esther) is named after concealment, “I shall conceal my face.”[i] Not only is her identity long-concealed from her husband, but Esther is itself a pseudonym for Hadassah, a name of doubled and redoubled darkness, concealment that is itself concealed.

Esther is not just the name of the work but its theme. Every other book of the holy Jewish Tanakh mentions G·d by name. Esther does not. It is apparently a story of natural events, political machinations, reversals of fortune, the workings of happenstance. These must pass for G·d in the story of Purim.

Mordechai, a hero of Purim, is the nemesis of the evil Haman. Yet in this respect, they seem to work together. Mordechai writes the Megillah and hides G·d’s presence within it. Haman is a scion of Amalek; hiding G·d’s presence is his specialty. Mordechai does not name G·d; Haman says naming Him would make no difference. Amalek has the same numerical value as safek, doubt. Haman is doubt. Should Mordechai not have stood against doubt, and named G·d?[ii]

Nowhere is happenstance, the Hamanic G·d, more present than in gambling and chance. The honest scientist, in his exile interludes, admits his firm laws are bound by the rules of possibility and statistics, down to (and especially in) the quantum realm. Even regular laws of physics from Newton to Einstein and beyond are applied “with all else being equal.” The sun will probably rise tomorrow and the eggs on my breakfast plate will probably be better on my digestive system than the plate itself unless something happens, something unpredictable. The dice roll, we find the ends of the bell curve, the impactful and unlikely, the proverbial black swan. As the Yiddish saying goes, Mahn tracht un G·t lacht. Man plans and G·d laughs.

If the book of exile is named Esther because G·d is hidden within it, exile’s holiday is named Purim because stuff happens, no matter the plan.  Pur is the Persian word for ‘lottery’. It is the lottery that lies curled at the heart of darkest exile. Who catches the virus? Not whom a just G·d chooses, but those who are exposed. Ah, some who are exposed don’t catch it? Luck of the draw. The thing-that-just-so-happens happened to just-happen to them. The only knowledge in the face of Cornovirus is knowledge for shifting the odds in one’s favor, not unlike praying to a trickster god in ancient Sumeria. No finite being can make real assurances, after all, for there is no being enforcing logical laws in the particular, that all things should fit, and something may fail to fit today. That’s Haman, that’s doubt, that’s the roll of the dice, a Pur.

This is what Mordechai and Esther name the holiday celebrating Haman’s defeat. Just whose side are they on?

There are so many things to not know. Rather than assuming Mordechai and Esther should be agents for knowledge and enlightenment, we attend to the very core of Purim and find a battle over ignorance, a fight for the soul of unknowing.

Attend: Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, may be read as the ‘Day like Purim’. Superficially, they are quite different: Fasting and feasting, solemnity and joy, apologizing and celebrating. Yet on Yom Kippur, we find a striking parallel, a commitment to unknowing:

The High Priest on the Day of Atonement would choose by lottery between two goats, one exiled to die in the desert of Azazel, and the other designated a sacrifice to G·d in the Temple. On this holiest day of the year, not only were the goats chosen by lottery, but the randomness of that lottery is openly emphasized in Jewish law.[i] The goats must be equal in appearance, size, and value, and should be purchased at the same time. We are not to see any reason why one should go to Azazel and one to G·d. A lottery is not, after all, a logical choice, but a random selection among equally-likely outcomes. With minds like human beings or “G·d”, there is arguing. With the lottery, the forces of nature, Haman’s favorite things, there is no arguing. The doubt is inherent.

But the joke is on Haman. He thinks Amalek has penetrated the temple on Yom Kippur. In truth, ranks of infinite angels have praised the lottery, “happenstance,” doubt, and chance long before Eisav first sired Amalek or exile darkened the face of the earth. Haman’s favorite things are the source of all repentance, the essence of Yom Kippur, and even more the essence of Purim.

Repentance is the most powerful force in the universe, without which life would be completely impossible. Even the greatest Puritans, the greatest flingers of fire and brimstone (today often not religious in the monotheistic sense of the word), believe in repentance even as they are rebuking the heathen and condemning him to death. The proof: They believe they themselves are good, not bad. Without repentance, at this stage in history, it is impossible that they can think of themselves as good, and their enemies bad, without a belief in repentance.

This proof holds across widely varying definitions of evil. Repentance is a robust existential proposition, not merely a moral one. Let’s take an outlandish figure from the late exile: Hitler, may his name be obliterated. Old Adolf had an unusual definition of evil, we may all agree. The details don’t matter. What matters is that repentance is the essence of life itself, even for monsters. Just as no story of a sinner’s life does not include sin, no story of Hitler’s life does not include his enemies. It doesn’t matter if you demean those enemies, send them to the gas chamber, deny to the death any association with them—you are causally bound. That is, part of what makes Hitler, Hitler is what makes a Jew, a Jew. He can say he hates it and wants to destroy them; this is what the sinner says about his past. But how can the sinner escape? Just as there is no “pure Hitler” without the Jews because Hitler is defined in relation to the Jews, just as his every move is pervaded by their presence, how he cannot relieve himself without being a Jew-hater relieving himself, so are the sinner’s desire not to sin, his attempts at compensation, his apologies, indelibly tainted with violation. Oh, a sinner is asking forgiveness…?

Hitler, or the sinner, or any who seek to find innocence in the face of perceived corruption, those, in other words, who seek to be good while others are evil, have two options:

1) To refuse to acknowledge any influence. Reject the notion of logical connection per se and declare all actions to be a pure willing-into-being from the self. I am not a sinner; I am nothing but myself.

2) To somehow not be a sinner even while acknowledging the past connection to sin. To rewrite the past with the present.

The former option may be understood as logical, even in its negation of logic, like negative space. The latter option does not provide a means or an explanation at all.

The former is to doubt all defining truth in favor of on’s own will. The latter is to doubt the negation of logic itself, to doubt the doubt, to doubt the question.

The former is to cast a lottery among the actions, no one superior to any other, for no one can know which is preferable. The latter is to soar when one runs out of intellectual road, to do good even when my mind says good and evil are equal.

The former is to say that all actions are equal and so the difference between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordechai’ is illusory. The latter is to unknow into existence their inner similarity, to transform what is surely as evil as Haman into what is surely good as Mordechai.

The former is Amalek, Hitler, Haman. The latter is repentance and the light of the Jewish people.

But wait, did we not say repentance is essential to every living thing? If Amalek is able to reject repentance in favor of nihilism, of pure skepticism—if it can declare its doubts certain with total certitude—then there is another path, and one doesn’t need repentance in order to live.

Come to think of it, Hitler and Haman didn’t live very long…

We unknow the ‘cursed is Haman’ into ‘blessed is Mordechai’ not through ignorance or an appeal to the inner equality of all things, but repentance. The two goats of Yom Kippur are equal not because G·d and Azazel are equal, G·d forbid, but because we acknowledge that, if LOGIC were used to choose between the saved and the punished, we would be punished. We are not innocent in our understanding. We do not, per the web of causes and effects, do any righteousness unaffected by our past transgression. The only escape is repentance.

Repentance: To transcend G·d’s will for what is right to ask forgiveness from G·d Himself. There is no averting a decree signed with the King’s signet. But the King Himself may still come to our aid and sign a new decree. We may, by dint of our inherent soul-connection with G·d[i], speak to the One Who Wills, the One who may have willed differently.

The true source of all doubt, of Haman, of the darkness of exile, is a place where good and evil are as nothing before Him. There is felt there not G·d’s eternal unrevoked choice of good, but His ability to freely doubt, the fact that ‘good’ may have been ‘evil’ and ‘evil’ ‘good’ before him. That He chooses freely in the way His creations have been allowed to choose freely. That He has never been defined by good and evil, and they have been defined by Him; they, too, are His creations.

From here He can forgive, for from here, things may have been different; from here, He escapes the forms of all His own chosen logics. From here, He can wipe the slate clean.[ii]

How do we reach a place where He is somehow both good and yet not defined by being good? How do we find this place both beyond all knowing and the source of all knowing?

Lean in, say, L’chaim, and hear: The place is inside us.

The secret inner place of unknowing, which reaches into the cruel terror of illogical exile, reveals its inner blessing, and subjugates it in the eyes of all to the One King—its name is Bittul, self-abnegation.

The Jews of Persia choose self-abnegation beyond reason. They choose G·d even on the pain of destruction. Even when their every sense and reason says their existence depends not on a hidden G·d but on worldly considerations, they reject (and so elevate) those reasons and logics in favor of G·d. The correct course of action remains the same, even as they are placed in a position where they may well, according to reason, have chosen the other course of action.

The Jews of Persia are given a situation of doubt, a lottery. They do not know which way things will go. They place a finger on the scale and certainly determine the course of events by turning to G·d beyond all reason. They reveal the lottery to be a means by which they are reminded of the only certainty beyond the limits of logic. That things could possibly go Haman’s way is the callsign of a G·d unbound by any rules, even the rules of exile. The Jews repent, and ‘cursed is Haman’ becomes ‘blessed is Mordechai.’ The genocidal lottery becomes the holiday. The doubt is not removed but transcended, for it, too, is G·dly.

So in the time of doubt, in the time of terror, the solution is not logic and enlightenment. The pure joy of Purim does not lie down that road. All logics and explanations may be doubted. The joy of Purim is the joy of certainty, and certainty cannot escape doubt on a raft of facts. It is the joy of repentance, and repentance cannot escape the past on some new assurances from a sinner.

Certainty transforms doubt as repentance transforms sin, by freely choosing G·d in the dark. The joy of Purim is not an ignorant joy, but simply an unknowing one. It looks at all the reasons and explanations why our existence is difficult and pained and uncertain and sees that they, too, were choices, little messages of G·d, signals that sound in the dark. We catch them, hear them, and come home.

[i] ”From where in the Torah [do I know] Esther? ‘And I will surely hide my face.’ (Deut. 31:18)” Talmud Chullin 139b

[ii] Not knowing G·d is no mere incidental detail in the Purim story. That G·d is not named is no accident, but fundamental to the entire story of repentance under the threat of mass slaughter. In Jewish history, Purim marks the conclusion of the receiving of the Torah, which is one of the reasons it’s the latest book of the Tanakh. It was only in the story of Purim that the Jews truly accepted the Torah, because we only know the relationship is real when it is truly tested. In the concealment of G·d, the people freely chose Him. Purim is the choice of G·d even when he appears to be in no position to reciprocate with blessing. It is the proof that the love continues even when there’s a chance it’s unrequited. His hiddeness is thus integral to the importance of the day, a detail far too important to leave to chance.

[iii] Mishna Yoma beginning of ch. 6

[iv] Amalek’s doubts and its severing of all logical webs also derive from an inner ‘soul truth’, but only by rejecting the logical and finite aspects of the soul. The litmus test here as in so many things is unity. The proof that Amalek is OF the exile rather than redeeming the exile is that they are not alive (souls in bodies) but dead, nihilistic, or insane, the three escapes from unity, the three abjurations of G·d’s purpose.

[v] This place of His Choosing is one of the most misunderstood places in history. The slightest error or impurity in one’s conceptions of G·d, and it is impossible to see correctly. The errors generally fall into two categories:

(a) Those who think that if G·d does not choose the good over evil because of some logic, then good is not really good and evil not really evil. This is the path of the rationalists, ironically named, for it is to ignore the rationally necessary supra-rational basis of all rationality. Indeed, the freely-chosen good is greater than any good by its own definition, since the freely-chosen good is chosen infinitely.

(b) Those who think that because G·d relates totally freely to good and evil that G·d really does not choose between them and that there really is no truth to the difference. Or in other words, that WITH G·D, the details of one’s actions don’t matter, and the entire notion of divinely-commanded morality is superficial. This was likely the mistake of the founder of Christianity and of Shabbatai Tzvi, among others. They do not see how the good itself is rooted in the very being of the chooser, just as they cannot see how the actual finite existence of the world is no contradiction to His infinite unchanging unity.

Don’t answer too quickly. There is no small measure of theology afoot here, in this common, apparently mundane circumstance.

The first philosophical issue with taking an Advil for your headache is the problem of induction. A skeptic such as Hume would ask how you know that ibuprofen will relieve your headache better than the egg. You cannot rely on past experience with the substances, as all experience on logically tells us about what has already happened, whereas the future, today’s Advil, may raise your cholesterol while the egg heals your headache. It does no good to claim it was always the opposite in the past, or that in your past your expectations in this scenario were always met, since the accuracy of past predictions may itself be merely an artifact of the past, irrelevant to today.[i]

No, if we are to properly face our dilemma we must assume we know certain truths about the universe in a future-proof way. Call them axioms, assumptions, or the direct experience of the atemporal. Say we know G-d, and G-d made the Universe, from the beginning, with a certain consistency. Things have names reflecting an adherence to an internal and an external order. Call this “nature.” The Advil is better for our headache than the egg, all else being equal, since this is the nature of ibuprofen.[ii] We ought to be comfortable with Advil having a nature, as our scenario starts with a desire to worship the one G-d, who made the world intelligible.[iii]

However, having escaped one problem by setting forth the notion of nature, we immediately find ourselves trapped anew.

We wish to take Advil instead of the egg for our headache, since the Advil has a pain-relieving nature when ingested. But isn’t this relying on a limited being, that is, ibuprofen tablets, instead of relying on upon G-d? After all, the original idolaters worshipped the sun and moon because they thought it would help their crops grow; perhaps I worship Advil to help me get back to work. Ingestion would not be the strangest form of worship.[iv]

Now, perhaps we could separate Advil from idol by pointing out we do not believe the medicine alone will help us, but rather that G-d gave it the power to help us. However, the origin in G-d of a creation’s beneficent (or malevolent) power is only enough to negate the most radical idol worship, which holds G-d has abandoned the earth entirely to the forces of nature. This is full-progressed idol worship, civilized and mature, and it sounds suspiciously similar to Emerson and Thoreau.

The original idol worship, however, does not exclude G-d as an active force consistently present in the universe generally or human lives specifically. It merely claims there are other powers, too, with the ability to open or close the valves of divine blessing at will, like ministers to a king. The original sun worshippers did not think the sun was the source of its own power with G-d long gone, but rather that the sun was appointed by G-d to bestow vivifying radiance upon the earth, and despite the origin of its appointment and its power in G-d, one must thank and praise the sun as well if one wants the crops to grow.

What does this have to do with taking ibuprofen? I’d understand if we thought Advil had a choice in whether to cure our headache, leading us eventually to thank and praise it. But we apparently see the medicine the way a true monotheist sees the sun, i.e. as the “ax in the hands of the wood chopper,” merely instrumental to G-d’s purposes, and possessing no free choice whether to help or hurt us at all. Advil is merely G-d’s tool. It has a curative nature, bestowed upon in by G-d, and it is only G-d we thank for it. We are not like the sun worshippers of old. Right?

Wrong.

Though the sun worshippers’ mistake manifests most clearly in the case of an intermediary with free will, it also expresses, in a more refined fashion, in every inherent quality. That is, Advil’s pain-relieving quality can in itself be the object of a subtle form of idol worship.

The question is, what is nature? We noted before that the very logic ingesting Advil (instead of an egg) for your headache is based on the nature that inheres in the medicine, a nature very much connected to a G-d who exists beyond time. What is the nature of this nature?

If the nature of Ibuprofen is a set of rules or laws created by G-d as an independent entity, this means that both the man who deserves a headache and the man who deserves his headache to end will be served by the Advil equally. If this does not sound scandalous, the business equivalent would be that a man who deserves to be richer and a man who deserves to be poorer are served equally, under the law of nature, by identical business practices.

In other words, although we do not think the Advil (or shorting stocks, or collecting airline miles) is a being with free will that can choose to help us, we do see it as having a nature that determines outcomes for us, regardless of other considerations, divine considerations. Though G-d is the ultimate power, this object will bring me a certain measure of blessing, regardless of what G-d wants, regardless of whether I reject Him or worship Him. It has power, beyond His control.

One way we could try to circumvent this problem and still rely on ibuprofen as monotheists is through the permissiveness of miracles. After all, if G-d wishes, He may intercede and prevent the salutary effects of Advil on, say, Martin Shkreli (it may be His sense of humor). That G-d intercedes in nature is, after all, fundamental. There is thus a means to ensure that even though by nature the medicine has the same unchanging effect, beyond nature it does not.

Yet this is no true negation of idol worship, since we should still have to concede that nature is a power independent of G-d. Even though He can negate its power at any time, ibuprofen must still be negated to express the will of G-d, and when it is not negated but soothes Shkreli’s aching wrists, it is acting “beyond” G-d’s will! The Creator must prevent nature from running its course every time an evil man receives good business advice. What, then is nature, if a countervailing system of behavior must so often avert it? And who, then, is the one G-d, if His ax handles are so often in rebellion?

Rather, the nature of the Advil, its palliative properties, must be wholly dependent on G-d, with no ability to help or hurt outside of Him. They must not merely be caused by G-d, derive their power from Him, and then act independently. They are not merely created by Him at every moment, technically dependent on G-d, because then the question would remain, what is being created? and the answer could be, a consistent nature irrespective of G-d’s will.

No, to negate the idolatry of qualities, we must understand nature itself, without any miracle and before even looking to its source, as an expression of the divine will. As the Holy Baal Shem Tov put it, a leaf only turns a specific way in the wind if G-d’s desires it. This is true, even though the wind is part of nature and governed by the consistent laws of nature. It is G-d’s will that there should be a leaf, that there should be a wind, that circumstance should bring them and their natures together, and that the wind should so twist.

Advil has the nature of relieving headaches, but that nature, just like headaches or the futures market, can never come to benefit anyone outside of G-d’s will. Nature, in the first place, is merely an expression of G-d, and its existence independent of Him as a second power He has any need to change or subvert is illusory from the start.[v]

In order to truly not worship idols, to believe that G-d is the only power, one must look at the qualities inherent to nature as an integrated part of the more general divine expression, thick with natural, supernatural, unexplained, inexplicable, well-understood, and even human causes. This creation of G-d, a complex weave constantly unfolding according to His desire for our universe, is at no point beyond His control, and in no way contrary to His wishes. It is, in its minutest detail, exactly the way it must be, even when it appears independently, alone, and without regard for the truth.

A Jew takes Advil instead of an egg for his headache, because ibuprofen has a quality of pain relief in its G-d-given nature. A Jew also knows that this nature has no power whatsoever outside of G-d. If it relieves his pain, it is only because he is deserving in the eyes of his Creator. This is how one may live in the realm of nature and bow to no image nor rely on any power besides G-d alone.

[i] This is without mentioning the problem of how, on a purely experimental or experiential basis, we are meant to understand the egg to be an egg, when its appearance, location, DNA, etc. are all quite different from what we have previously encountered. To rule out medicinal qualities a priori is thus to demonstrate a closed-mindedness unbecoming those who learn primarily from experience.

[ii] We have a tendency nowadays to focus on the mechanism of this medicinal nature. An in-depth exploration of why this mechanism will only ever get us so far, and the way it is more of an answer to how than why, is for a different essay.

[iii] Moreover, in the form of an intellect apparently subject to description by words.

[iv] Cf. Baal Pe’or, worshipped through defecation before its image.

[v] This raises the question of why there are miracles at all – a good question to have, for another time.