One of the words in the prayer book used to praise G-d is “Omnipotent,” or all-powerful. Before prayer, the sages advise taking a moment to contemplate the greatness of G-d, how He created the world through speech and is in control of everything. According to Kabbala, the notion of Hashem creating the world from speech is taken quite literally, even to the extent that the letters themselves comprise all of creation, and that every object is made out of a combination of these letters. According to this concept, if G-d were to remove the vitality from these letters, which are the building blocks of the world, for a brief second, everything would cease to exist.
Belief in G-d’s Omnipotence is an important aspect of Jewish thought, but the notion of free will is also important. There seems to be a paradox between these two ideas. After all, since we are approaching the holiday of Rosh Hashana, when the entire world is judged, the question might arise how judgment is possible, given the fact that G-d is all powerful. In other words, if G-d is omnipotent, how is it that people are able to decide between right and wrong, and how can things exist, such as sin, which seem contrary to His will?
The answer to this question lies in the fact that G-d created non-existence as well as existence. How can non-existence “exist”? The same way that silence, ironically, can be a form of communication. G-d’s will is revealed in the Torah, but he created the world in such a way that his will would be concealed in many circumstances, to allow human beings the choice of acting according to His will or to do the opposite. In a sense, G-d hid himself in the world so that we should look for Him. If Hashem were completely revealed in the world, the existence of other beings would be cancelled out by the intensity of such a light. For the world to exist, G-d must conceal himself in various ways to allow human beings to play a role in creation.