One of my favorite games as a kid was Sardines. The inverse of hide and seek, in this game only one person hides, and everyone else searches. The fun comes upon discovering the hidden one: when you find the person hiding, you have to surreptitiously join them in their spot. As the game goes on, that one person hiding under the bed or in the closet all alone is joined first by one, then two, then three… when finally the last person arrives, everyone playing finds themselves huddled up there together, smushed into some tiny space like sardines in a tin.

I’ve been hiding. It’s been weeks since I’ve written. First it was Pesach (Passover), then it was a funeral week, then I had classes to prepare and teach. New week, new excuse. Legit. And also, not legit, because… I was hiding. Unsure what to offer, unsure how to initiate the seeking, unsure how to keep showing up. 

Each of us hides from one another in a million ways. There are pulls on our time, and then there’s the psyche. We hide from ourselves as much as from one another. We want connection, to be found in our alone-ness and to have friends show up wanting to be close with us. And also, we want to be alone, separate and solitudinous. 

The seeking part is a solo endeavor, too, even though we’re all doing it, all the time. Secretly searching for something in life: love, a job, more money, more meaning, God, or the dessert you don’t want to be seen sneaking after dinner.

“Just as the Holy One sees but is not seen, so too the soul sees but is not seen.”
– Midrash Tanhuma, Pikudei 3

We are now (in the parasha cycle) just past halfway through Leviticus, that is to say, halfway through the Torah. Here we encounter those foundational verses at the center, the Holiness Code of chapters 19 and 20, ethical injunctions like: Tell the truth. Do not steal, do not put a stumbling block before the blind, do not make a strong animal work alongside a weaker one. Pay your workers on time and leave the corners of the field for the poor. And the climax: “Love your neighbor as yourself; I am YHVH.”

Only the Holy One sees whether we’re living up to this or not. Our actions might indicate our emotions, but they could be just for show. Love is hidden inside where no one sees it, and we sneak it around with us as we hide and seek. Along with so much else our souls hold, invisible. 

Loving your neighbors: what a search we are on for that! Searching for people who love us, searching for love in our own hearts for those around us, whether we like them or agree with them or share sugar and eggs or just bicker over the leash laws.

The incomparable Avivah Zornberg writes of this week’s parasha (in The Hidden Order of Intimacy): “This neighbor – who has every reason to be wary of you; who may need to be protected from your aggression; who may be of a different gender; who may be a man condemned to death, or a revered father – this neighbor is profoundly connected with you. In theological terms, the connection is rooted in the idea that both were created in the image of God… The [neighbor] is just like you – precisely in the sense that he, too, has blind spots, points of failure, that make him both threatening and unbearable. But precisely here begins a specific way of opening to the Other in the place and time we already inhabit” (emphasis mine).

In the place and time we already inhabit! As in, we don’t need to go off searching for the perfect hiding spot. We’re already here, in the place and time we inhabit, with the people right here in our lives already. Like in the legends that exist in every culture, including Judaism, about the guy who goes off to find the gold hidden someplace far away only to learn that it was there under his floorboards the whole time.

Turns out, too, that even as we play this game of Sardines our whole lives, we are also playing another game, the aptly named game of Life. As kids we also used to play that, but it was about money and there was only one winner and it was much less fun. 

My hiding soul is searching for yours. I hope we find each other, or maybe what I mean to say is that I’m glad we are searching for each other. I’m glad we are neighbors, aspiring to love one another. I’m glad we can aspire together to love our neighbors, to search for people hidden in all sorts of places – people waiting for our love, waiting for us to find them.