Venahafoch Hu: On Shame, Masks, and the Tools We Use

Part of an ongoing reflection this year on presence, sobriety, voice, and the tools we use along the way.

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On shame and exposure 

Someone posted recently: “Thinking of starting a support group for those suffering from AI shame. We all use it for meal planning, business development, tech support and therapy. But often get stuck saying so out loud.”

It made me smile. And then it made me pause.

Support groups don’t usually form when something is rare. They form when something is common but uncomfortable, when enough people are quietly doing the same thing and quietly wondering if they’re the only one. That’s when shame becomes communal.

I use it too. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes more openly. I’ve written before about using tools to help find my voice again — about how even Moshe Rabbeinu turns to the tool of song at the end of his leadership. And yes, this article was written with the help of AI as well.

Does that make it less real?

The stories are mine. The questions are mine. The wrestling is mine. The responsibility is mine. 

The tool helped shape it. It didn’t live it. It supported the structure. It didn’t supply the soul.

So why shame? Why the instinct to whisper about using a tool?

Beneath the discomfort is often a quieter fear:

If people know I use this, maybe I’m not as original as I present.

Maybe I’m not as intelligent as I want to appear.

Maybe the version of me I’ve curated isn’t entirely self-made.

Shame rarely lives alone. It sits at the intersection of how I see myself and how I imagine others will see me. If the scaffolding shows, will they think less of the building? And if they do, what does that say about me?

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Yesh Me’Ayin

Only Hashem creates יש מאין — something from nothing. Everything human beings build is something from something. 

Torah is the original text. Everything since has been commentary layered upon commentary: Midrash on Torah, Mishnah on Torah, Gemara on Mishnah, Rishonim, Acharonim, Kabbalah, Chassidus — each layer revealing dimensions that were always there. Insight builds on insight. Experience builds on memory.

No one accuses the Ramban of plagiarism because he quotes Midrash. No one questions the originality of a chiddush because it stands on centuries of voices. Human creativity has always been collaborative. We call it mesorah.

Before Waze, we had standalone GPS units suctioned to the windshield. Before that, we printed MapQuest. Before MapQuest, we unfolded a giant atlas across the passenger seat. Before that, we followed the stars. Each generation used the best tools available to find its way and still called it travel.

So why does using a modern tool suddenly feel like cheating?

It isn’t really about artificial intelligence.

It’s about exposure.

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Why This Feels So Personal

For many of us who grew up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, asking for help wasn’t normalized. Therapy was whispered about. Struggle was private. Strength meant self-sufficiency. We were taught resilience, often without language for vulnerability.

Now the world looks different. People have language for things we didn’t name when we were younger. Many have therapists, coaches, mentors, people who help them reflect in ways we weren’t always taught to. In the middle of that shift, something strange happens: we feel both permission and embarrassment at the same time.

We’re told it’s healthy to get help.

And somewhere deep inside, we still hear: you should be able to do this alone.

So when a new tool enters the room, especially one that touches creativity or thought, the old reflex flares up. If I use this, does it mean I’m not enough?

Shame moves quickly. Before we’ve even decided we’re exposed, it has already sewn fig leaves.

And that got me thinking about masks.

About what we hide. About what we reveal. About why it sometimes feels easier to put on a costume than to admit vulnerability.

Which is exactly where Purim lives.

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Masks, Costumes, and Purim

On Purim we wear masks openly. We exaggerate. We play. And often, strangely, it is the most honest we are all year. People say what they’ve been holding. They laugh louder. They hug longer. They sing without self-consciousness. Something loosens.

For some, the only time they feel permitted to soften is under the banner of Ad Delo Yada. Alcohol lowers inhibition. It quiets the internal editor. It softens the ego’s grip just enough for something already inside to surface.

But the alcohol is not the honesty. It is a bypass.

And that raises an uncomfortable question:

What is the mask, the behavior we display all year? Or the alcohol that dissolves it for a night? 

Which version is more real?

Lowering inhibition chemically is not the same thing as building the capacity to be open sober.

I’ve written before about confusing sedation with connection, about how a l’chaim is meant to mean “to life,” not “away from life.” I’ve also shared what it looked like for me to step away from alcohol entirely, not because it ruined my life, but because it kept me half-present. That lens still shapes how I think about Purim.

Because beneath the masks and the cups and the costumes is a deeper question:

Why does hiddenness unsettle us so much?

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Hiddenness and Trust

The Megillah is the only book in Tanach in which none of Hashem’s Names appear explicitly. Not once. The entire story unfolds through politics, insomnia, coincidence, and courage. 

Hiddenness saturates every chapter. Yet precisely in that concealment, orchestration becomes visible to the attentive reader.

The Megillah does not panic at hidden authorship. It trusts it.

But that wasn’t always our instinct.

In Ki Tisa, when Moshe delays descending from Sinai, the people say, “We do not know what has become of him.” Hidden leadership stretches too long. Uncertainty becomes unbearable. So they construct something visible, a Golden Calf.

The Calf is not primarily a story about gold. That same gold will later build the Mishkan. It is a story about impatience with hiddenness. When the invisible feels distant, we build something tangible to quiet the anxiety.

Same hiddenness. Different response. One builds something visible to relieve discomfort. The other prays and waits.

If we go back even further, to the beginning of the human story, we see the first covering.

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The First Covering

Before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree, the Torah says:

“וַיִּהְיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם עֲרוּמִּים… וְלֹא יִתְבֹּשָׁשׁוּ”

They were naked, and they were not ashamed.

After eating the fruit, something shifts. It isn’t just disobedience. It’s awareness.

They do not only know good and bad. They realize they chose. They feel the gap between who they were commanded to be and what they just did. And before Hashem even calls out to them, they know they will be seen.

In that space between awareness and encounter, shame awakens. They sew fig leaves and hide.

The first garment in Torah emerges from vulnerability that suddenly feels unsafe.

But the story does not end with panic-coverings. Hashem makes for them garments and clothes them. There is a difference between coverings sewn in fear and clothing given in compassion. One hides from exposure. The other dignifies humanity.

Eden shows us what shame does.

Ki Tisa shows us what panic does.

Purim shows us what trust can do.

Three responses to exposure: hide quickly, replace visibly, or tolerate long enough to discover deeper presence.

What unsettles us in the Megillah is not so different from what unsettles us in ourselves. We are uncomfortable when authorship is hidden. We prefer visible credit, visible leadership, visible control. When the Author is not named, we strain. When the scaffolding of our own work is exposed, we tighten. Hiddenness makes us uneasy, whether it is Divine or human. The instinct is the same.

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Edges and Alignment

I still feel that old reflex sometimes, the urge to prove I don’t need help. To prove I can do it alone. I recognize that edge now for what it is, and I don’t mistake it for strength anymore.

Once you’ve been fully present, even briefly, it’s harder to pretend you don’t notice when you’re drifting. The clarity of being grounded becomes the reward. The weight of the fog is enough.

This is not only about alcohol. It is about how we steady ourselves when something feels exposed.

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Tools and What We Lean On

Alcohol can be a tool. AI can be a tool. Therapy can be a tool. Gold built the Calf. Gold built the Mishkan. The material is neutral. The state of the heart is not.

Not everyone drinks. Not everyone uses AI. But everyone leans on something.

For some, it’s busyness. For others, competence, being the reliable one, the inspiring one, the strong one. Identities that look virtuous on the outside and quietly function as armor on the inside.

Humor can buffer discomfort. Productivity can substitute for presence. “I’m just not emotional” can sound like self-knowledge when it is really self-protection.

The mask isn’t always indulgence. Sometimes it’s excellence.

The question isn’t whether you have a tool.

It’s whether you can set it down and still know who you are.

Sometimes the simplest experiment is to set something down briefly and notice what surfaces. Not forever. You don’t even have to tell anyone. Just long enough to see what rises when the noise quiets.

Tools become fig leaves when we use them to avoid ourselves. They become calves when we use them to replace trust with control. They become garments when we use them consciously, humbly, in service of growth.

Shame says, “If I need help, I am broken.”

Ego says, “I don’t need help at all.”

Humility says, “I use support. And I remain responsible.”

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Venahafoch Hu

Perhaps that is the real venahafoch hu. Not a reversal from weakness to strength, but from illusion to honesty. From panic to patience. From hiding to integration.

Purim is not only about reversal. Chazal say that on Purim we reached a moment of קִיְּמוּ וְקִבְּלוּ — we upheld and accepted what had once been given at Sinai, this time willingly. No thunder. No mountain suspended overhead. Just clarity born from hiddenness. A recommitment without coercion.

We all sew fig leaves sometimes. We all reach for something visible when hiddenness stretches longer than we’d like. We all wear masks that once protected us and now simply feel familiar. None of that makes us foolish. It makes us human.

Purim does not demand that we throw away every covering. It invites us to loosen them. To notice them. To remember that what is hidden is not necessarily absent and what is supported is not necessarily diminished.

Maybe that is the invitation, not just for Purim, but for the rest of the year.

Not to eliminate tools. Not to prove independence. Not to judge how others celebrate. But to become more conscious in how we relate to what we use.

To ask gently: am I hiding, or am I being supported? Am I replacing something, or strengthening something?

And to hold that question without shame.

On Purim we put on costumes and sometimes become more real. The rest of the year we take off the costume but keep the mask, the competent mask, the self-sufficient mask, the one who has it all handled.

The deeper work is simply learning to loosen that one.

To say, without panic and without performance: I need help. I collaborate. I use tools. And I am still me.

Not less honest.

Not less original.

Just more aware.

And that awareness, steady, conscious, unashamed, is the kind of joy you can carry long after the costumes go back in their box.

That kind of joy isn’t loud. It’s alignment.

If it doesn’t feel like joy yet, that isn’t failure. It’s information.

The work isn’t to force joy.

It’s to remove what’s in the way of it.

Happy Purim!

Berke 

If you’re trying to be more conscious about what you lean on, or experimenting with setting something down — this Purim or any time of year — and want someone to talk it through, I’m here. 

Just message me.

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