Deuteronomy 23:7

וְכֵ֧ן תַּעֲשֶׂ֣ה לַחֲמֹר֗וֹ וְכֵ֣ן תַּעֲשֶׂה֮ לְשִׂמְלָתוֹ֒ וְכֵ֣ן תַּעֲשֶׂ֗ה לְכׇל־אֲבֵדַ֥ת אָחִ֛יךָ אֲשֶׁר־תֹּאבַ֥ד מִמֶּ֖נּוּ וּמְצָאתָ֑הּ לֹ֥א תוּכַ֖ל לְהִתְעַלֵּֽם׃

You shall do the same with their donkey; you shall do the same with their garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent.

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The Hebrew language is incredible. In the commandment to return a lost object, the Torah warns us not to “l’hitalem” – להתעלם. We often translate this as, “Do not remain indifferent.” If you see something your neighbor has lost, even though it may be difficult to track them down or return the object, you cannot simply look the other way and pretend you did not notice. 

But “l’hitalem” literally means something closer to “to hide oneself.” The Torah seems to understand that remaining indifferent is a kind of hiding. When we ignore the good we can do that is right in front of us, we hide ourselves from our responsibility to notice, to care, and to help.

There is another beautiful connection: l’hitalem shares a root with olam – עולם, “world.” Jewish tradition plays with this connection by suggesting that God is, in some sense, hidden within the world. We do not always see holiness clearly.

Kabbalah teaches that what we do below affects what happens above. Perhaps when we refuse to hide from the world – when we show up, take responsibility, and make efforts to do good even when it’s hard – we reveal the holiness that was hidden in the world all along.