We have an uncomfortable relationship to secrecy. We all wish to receive secrets, but we also wish to tell them. After all, part of the joy of being trusted with a secret is letting other people know you were trusted, even if that act proves you should not have been. It is hard to escape the sense that secret things are somehow more potent, more urgent, than public things. “The secret things” after all, according to the Torah, “belong to God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
We read in Ki Tavo, “Cursed be the one who fashions a graven image…and sets it up in secret (27:15).” Even with the charged aura of secrecy, why is setting it up in secret uniquely bad? One who fashions an idol should be cursed in any case, given the Torah’s attitude toward idolatry. Why would it be reserved for the one who sets idols up in secret?
Our commentators have some answers. Both Rashbam and Ibn Ezra point out that such an act performed in public would be punished by the community or the courts. Therefore, the curse is not needed; the sin will be discovered. Elaborating on that, commentators point out that public sins can be corrected but the hypocrite will not repent because there is no public acknowledgment of sin. The danger of hypocrisy is that hiddenness hinders the possibility of teshuva. Thus Job, protesting his righteousness, says that he did not “secretly succumb” to idolatry (Job 31:27).
Rabbi Tsemach Duran in one of his teshuvot (legal responses), goes deeper still. Since the person sets the idol up in secret, he must believe no one knows about it. Therefore he is negating God’s knowledge, and not only worshiping idols but explicitly denying the reality of God by believing one can hide.
Taking these ideas together offers a powerful introduction to the High Holy Days. In this time we are asked to come before Yodea Machshavot, the One who knows our thoughts. In Pirkei Avot we are told, “In a place where there are no men, try to be a man.” In his commentary, the Shem Mishmuel says this may be taken literally – when no one is around, “when there are no men,” one must behave like a man. Secrecy cannot be an excuse for immorality. For we stand always in the presence of God.
Society is not the only school of character. We create who we are by being alone as well. The shape of our soul is forged by our privacy and resolution as well as our relationship and interaction. In our Torah portion we read, “You will be only at the top and never at the bottom (28:13).” That seems to mean Israel will ever be successful, but R. Azriel Hildesheimer reads it as an injunction to deeper natures. What is down, he asks? The earth. In other words, our physicality. What goes up? Fire, spirit, our soul. And so this is read before the High Holy Days because it is a counsel of ascent.
The part of ourselves that we cannot truly show to someone else, that is forever hidden, is not our bodies or our interactions, but our private thoughts and prayers – our souls. Teshuva begins here. Somewhere deep inside of ourselves – a hidden part, a secret part.
Part of the sin of idolatry is not believing in the reality of the intangible. God is intangible yet the greatest reality. For the Jewish tradition, the soul is a greater and more enduring reality than our physicality. That which you think of as secret and therefore hidden is also real and has effects on one’s character. Teshuva means returning to the highest in us, and enabling our visible actions to be a reflection of the reality we cannot see.
After the other curses, the text tells us “the people said ‘amen.’” After the curse mentioning secrecy, the text says “all the people answered and said ‘amen.’” In other words, there was an identified response to the sin of trying not to be identified. There was a repudiation of hidden sin, and an affirmation of the importance of character not only in public, but in private, even in secret.
This was essential for the Israelites as they prepared to enter the land, and is essential for us as we prepare to enter the Yamim Noraim, the days when we unearth our secret selves and bare our souls.
The writer is Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and the author of David the Divided Heart. On Twitter: @rabbiwolpe.