The Kabbalistic neighbours of a shadow

Judaism has its own vocabulary for a reality one sees through something: the levushim, garments that both conceal and make approachable; hester panim, the hiding of the Face; Moses granted a sight of God's back and not the face (Exodus 33:23); and the Zohar's parable of the beautiful maiden in the palace, who shows herself at the window for an instant to the one who keeps returning.

A convergence with a different temperament. Plato's veil is an obstacle to be climbed past. These veils are courtesies — the sight is not withheld out of stinginess but because an unmediated one would not be survivable, and even Moses gets the back.