How can it be that the Divine, of which no place is void, and which sustains and maintains every part of existence, can be concealed?
How is it possible to conceal God?
God is the most hidden of all hidden, more concealed than anything concealed.
God is present, but not revealed.
He is known as “the God who conceals Himself.”
There are two types of concealment.
The firstis when a concealed entity becomes concealed.
This is built on the fact that there is a certain mechanism for the concealment, of a darkening that prevents revelation.
The second category, which in many ways is the more common, is the concealment that does not require any mechanism of concealment, as it is a concealed character that cannot be comprehended.
The first type is the result of a smallness of light, since the light is covered and cannot emerge and be revealed outward.
The second type derives from the fact that the light is so bright that it cannot be comprehended by existing tools of comprehension.
In this sense, among human beings as well, the greatest concealment is not when a person hides something, but rather, when he says everything, and specifically then the receiver does not understand anything.
This is concealment that does not derive from too little revelation, but rather from too much, from a lack of connection between the hidden and the one who reveals.
When we speak of “the God who conceals Himself,” of the concealment of God, we speak primarily of the second type of concealment.
For although “there is no place void of Him,” it is actually for this precise reason that we cannot see anything.
Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz