The Soiled Face

ESSAY: The Soiled Face
Perhaps we expend less physical effort to earn our livelihood today than we did two hundred and two thousand years ago, but our mental, emotional and spiritual investment has never been greater

And G-d spoke to Moses, saying: “Make a basin of copper, and its stand of copper, for washing, and place it between the Tent of Meeting and the altar.... And Aaron and his sons should wash their hands and feet from it, when they enter the Tent of Meeting... or when they approach the altar to serve...”

Since the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem more than nineteen hundred years ago, G-d does not commune with man in a “Tent of Meeting,” nor do kohanim offer sacrifices to Him upon the altar. Yet the Holy Temple and the service performed therein remain, to this very day, the vehicle for our relationship with G-d; it is only that today they exist in a more spiritual form. In the words of our sages: “The daily prayers were instituted in place of the daily offerings”[1]; “A person’s table is comparable to the altar”[2]; “From the day that the Holy Temple was destroyed, G-d has only the four cubits of Halachah (i.e., the places where Torah law is studied) in His world.”[3] Thus, many of the laws which govern our lives today derive from the laws of the Temple and its service: the designated times for prayer are the times in which the daily offerings were brought in the Temple; at the table, we dip our bread in salt because the salt was part of every offering placed upon the altar; and so on.

Before a kohen could perform a service in the Holy Temple or enter the Sanctuary, he first had to purify and sanctify himself by washing his hands and feet from a washstand especially constructed for that purpose. For although the Torah instructs to “know G-d in all your ways”[4] and that “all your deeds should be for the sake of Heaven,”[5] one must still distinguish between the world outside the Temple walls and that which is the exclusive domain of the Divine. When entering the sanctuary of G-d, one must cleanse himself of the materiality of everyday life, “washing his hands” of all that carries the taint of self-interest and mundanity.

This is the deeper significance of the law that obligates the kohen to wash his hands and feet before approaching the service of G-d. In its post-Temple incarnation, this law instructs the Jew to “wash his face, hands and feet” prior to the morning prayers, to cleanse and purify himself before making the transition from a material being in a material world to a soul communing with her Creator.[6]

“If you eat of the toil of your hands,” proclaims the Psalmist, “fortunate are you, and good is to you.”[7] Chassidic teaching explains that the verse is telling us to invest only the most external of our faculties in the pursuit of material livelihood, leaving our higher talents free to devote themselves exclusively to our spiritual goals.

Our ancestors sustained themselves exclusively with the toil of their hands. The Patriarchs were shepherds, and the Jews who settled in the Holy Land were tillers of the soil. Many of the greatest Talmudic sages, whose teachings are a source of guidance and wisdom to us to this very day, were manual laborers: Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar was a cobbler, Rabbi Joshua a blacksmith, Shammai a bricklayer. There were also merchants and shopkeepers, but business was free of the craftiness and obsessive preoccupation that characterize it today. Scholarship and teaching were not professions but sacred callings, not to be sullied by the remuneration of material reward. Earning one’s daily bread was a matter for the hands and feet and the most rudimentary of mental exercises, not something upon which to expend the mind’s ingenuity or the heart’s devotion, which were reserved only for life’s higher aims.

That world is no longer. Today, we not only invest time and energy in the endeavor to procure our material needs; we give it our “all”—our keenest mental capacities, our strongest passions, our most forceful will.[8] Our “careers” consume our days and nights, our minds and hearts, indeed, our very identities (we don’t ask each other, “What do you do to make money?”—we say, “What do you do?”).

This explains the difference between the two laws quoted at the beginning of this essay. The law that one should wash before praying is a derivative of the law that the kohanim must wash before entering the Sanctuary or performing a service in the Holy Temple. But while the Torah commands Aaron and his sons to wash their hands and feet, Maimonides rules that before the morning prayers one must wash his hands, feet and face.

In the time of the Temple, only the “hands and feet”—externalities of human life—were involved in material pursuits; so only they required purification and sanctification before being devoted to the service of G-d. The “face” of man—his higher prowess and inner self[9]—required no such cleansing, for it was not sullied in the first place.

But in later generations, the mundanity of life began its encroachment on our inner selves. Today, the effort to commune with G-d also requires the cleansing of our “faces” of the taint of the material. Our minds and hearts must be purged of the prejudices and affinities that adhere to it in the course of their involvement in earthly affairs, so that we can truly relate to the essence and purpose of life.

A Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) contains 304,805 letters, each handwritten in black ink on parchment by a highly trained scribe. If a single letter is missing or deformed, the entire scroll is unfit for use.

Another important law regarding the Sefer Torah is that each of its letters must be ringed by an blank strip of parchment. Should a letter touch its fellow even by a hair, thereby violating the “white space” between them, again, the entire scroll is disqualified from use until the error is corrected.

Every Jew is a letter in G-d's scroll. Our sages tell us that if a single Jewish soul had been absent from Sinai, the Torah could not have been given to us. The people of Israel comprise a single, interdependent entity; the lack or deformity of a single Jewish soul, G-d forbid, would spell a lack and deformity in us all.

But equally important is the inviolable “space” which distinguishes each and every one of us as a unique individual. Often, a strong sense of community and communal mission tend to obscure the differences between its members, blurring them to a faceless mass. Says the Torah: true, my hundreds of thousands of letters spell a single integral message. But this message is comprised of hundreds of thousands of voices, each articulating it in its own particular manner and medium. To detract from the individuality and uniqueness of one is to detract from the integrity of the collective whole.

The following is a freely translated excerpt from a letter by the Rebbe, dated Cheshvan 25, 5713 (November 13, 1952):[11]

Many times I have heard my father-in-law[12] repeat the teaching by the holy Baal Shem Tov[13] that "from everything one sees or hears, one should derive a lesson in one's personal life.'' Also your occupation - the automobile business - is replete with such "pointers.''

A fueled automobile has all the necessary parts and potential energy to move from place to place. Still, the first impetus must come from a spark, generated by the "starter''; all subsequent movement of the automobile is dependent upon this spark. Nevertheless, it is not desirable to repeatedly activate the starter to stimulate each new movement of the auto. Once moving, the auto should run on its own, without the need for any further sparks.

The same applies to the inner motor of man. G-d created us complete with all the necessary parts and resources to drive our lives - our body, our G-dly Soul and our Animal Soul have all been supplied with everything that we need to serve G-d and fulfill our purpose in creation. Nevertheless, we all need, from time to time, a "spark,'' an inspiration from Above, some revelatory moment to turn us on and get us moving. But one must take care not to grow too dependent on such sparks and come to require a new boost at every turn in the road. The first spark should be enough to get us started, after which we should draw on our own internal resources, which we possess in abundant supply, to continue moving toward our destination.

In his early years, before he went public with his teachings and disciples came from far and wide to learn from him, the founder of the chassidic movement, Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, was an incessant traveler. Dressed in the clothes of a simple villager, he would travel from town to town and from hamlet to hamlet, asking questions. “How are things?” he would inquire of the water-carrier yoked to his pails, of the market-woman minding her stall, of the child playing in the doorway of his home. “Is there enough to eat? Is everyone healthy?” “Baruch Hashem, blessed be the Almighty, all is fine” or “Thanks to the Almighty, things are improving,” these simple, G-d-fearing and G-d-trusting Jews would reply, and the traveler would depart with the gratified step of one who has found what he was seeking.

One day, Rabbi Israel arrived in a village and made his way to the study hall. There, in a corner, sat an ancient Torah scholar over his books, wrapped in tallit and tefillin. This was the village porush (“ascetic”), who led a life of holy seclusion. From sunrise to sunset, not a morsel of bread nor a sip of water would pass his lips; he spoke to no one and never lifted his eyes from the sacred tomes. For more than fifty years he had kept to this regimen, utterly removed from the mundane cares of material life.

So why was this stranger pestering him? “How are things?,” he was inquiring, “Is there enough to eat? Is everyone healthy?” The ascetic made no reply, hoping the stranger would go away. But the stranger only leaned closer, and his questioning grew more insistent. Impatiently, the ascetic waved him away, pointing him to the door.

“Rabbi,” the stranger now asked, “why are you denying G-d His livelihood?”

The words had their desired effect: the old man was roused to indignant attention. G-d's livelihood?! The audacity of this uncouth peasant! “What are you saying?” he demanded in a thunderous voice. ``How dare you disturb me with such blasphemous babble!''

“Only what King David, the sweet singer of Israel, proclaims in his Psalms,” replied the Baal Shem Tov. “Tell me, Rabbi, what is the meaning of the verse, ‘And You, the Holy One, who dwells by[14] the praises of Israel’[15]?”

“We mortal beings,” continued the Baal Shem Tov when the porush made no reply, “subsist on the sustenance that G-d provides us in His great kindness. But what does G-d ‘subsist’ on? On the praises of Israel! When one Jew asks another, ‘How are things’ and his fellow responds by praising and thanking the Almighty, they are nourishing G-d, deepening His involvement with his creation.”[16]

[6]. Talmud, Shabbat 50a; Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer, 4:1.

[8]. The story is told of a Chassid who opened a factory for the manufacture of galoshes, and was soon completely consumed by his flourishing business. Said Rabbi Sholom DovBer of Lubavitch to him: “I have heard of people who insert their feet in galoshes; but to put one’s head in galoshes?!”

[9]. In the English language, the word “face” often refers to the external aspect of things (as in “surface,” “superficial,” “façade,” “on the face of it,” “put a face on things,” etc.). But the Hebrew word for “face,” panim, actually means “innerness,” expressing the idea that the face is that part of a person’s body in which his higher faculties reside and which most reflects his essential nature and personality.

[12] Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950), sixth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch.

[13] Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760), founder of the chassidic movement.

[16] Nourishment is what binds body to soul; ``nourishing the Almighty'' thus implies the deepening of the bond between the divine essence of creation and the physical world (cf. Talmud, Brachot 10a: ``As the soul fills the body, so G-d fills the world'').