Faces and Obsessions
The Ark of the synagogue in Avignon, France, with the verse from Psalm 19:
Dear friends,
Thank you for all the well wishes for my Covid bout. It was so sweet to get all that love. And it worked!
One thing Covid didn’t cure me of, is my continuing obsession with Psalm 27. In the Kabbalistic poem Yedid Nefesh, which we often sing to welcome Shabbat, there’s talk of a love-sickness that reminds me of this poetic obsession:
Hadur na’eh Ziv ha’olam,
nafshi cholat ahavatach
The world shines
With sparkling beauty:
My soul is sick with Your love.
I try and imagine what the content is of this soul’s love sickness. What do we yearn for so deeply? What might the pain of longing for God manifest as? What exactly is this incurable malady that the poet asks relief from week after week? Is it a form of depression? Alienation? Meaninglessness? Heartbreak with the state of the world?
A hint might be found in the following line of Yedid Nefesh:
Ana el na refa na la
Behar'ot la noam zivach
Please, god, heal her
Show her it can shine sweet and soft.
To me this request for relief reads false. The real desire is to be in the longing, not to actualize it. With another person actualization might be a worthy goal. With God, however, the actualization lies in the seeking, in the desire, in the obsession. The lovesickness, what the Hassidic rabbis call Dveykus, or cleaving, is the desired state of being for Jews. In that sense, my obsession with Psalm 27 is a great example of my soul’s lovesickness for God.
Over and over I cleave to the questions the verses raise.
Lecha amar libi bakshu panay
Et panecha Adonai avakesh
My heart speaks Your words: Seek My face.
I seek Your face, Adonai.
What does it mean to seek the face of God? What is the heart doing in this process? Is the communication between me and God taking place there, within the realm of the heart, or is there, as the verse seems to suggest, an urging by the wordless heart to communicate with the All through words and actions? We do, after all speak to God in the second person. Atah - You, we say whenever we mouth a blessing or a prayer. There is, that implies, another entity to communicate with, a being of sorts, with something like a face, an energy to be in dialogue with. “Don’t objectify me,” seems to be the cry coming from God to our hearts through the words of the poet: "Seek My face."
it is a real encounter we are after. Don’t content yourself with seeing God from afar, like a bear sighting or a glimpse of a rare bird. No, the face implies a true meeting. On the face of it (sorry!) this sounds impossible. Torah tells us explicitly that only one person ever saw God face to face, and that is Moses. None of the prophets, priests, rabbis, sages, teachers, mystics achieved this. No one other than Moses ever had a face to face with God, and even Moses when he asked to see God’s face was only allowed a glimpse of his behind. So why would we bother to “Seek God’s face?”
Maimonides explains the verse from Exodus: “My face shall not be seen,”ופני לא יֵרָאו" like this:
אמיתת מציאותי כמות שהיא לא תושג
The truth of My presence as it is shall not be reached.
Seeing the face of God according to Maimonides means understanding the full truth of the reality of God. There is an objective reality to God that cannot be understood by a human being.
BUT! That does not, and must not preclude a subjective, partial experiencing of God, universe, transcendent self. A momentary understanding of one aspect of the All is possible. The heart that tells us to find God’s face is not actually sending us on an impossible mission. It is reminding us of our never ending personal mission to remain in the mode of the searching traveler.
The Hebrew word for face, panim is plural. When we are told, seek My face, we are in fact told to seek My faces. Find the one of the infinite faces that you can find today.
We are taught:
There are seventy faces to the Torah.
No matter how wise, knowledgable or transcendent, we can’t get all of them at once. What we can do is flip them around again and again.
הפוך בה והפוך בה
Flip her over and flip her again
We’re told about Torah.
That is the seeking of Her face.
Don’t find God: find your God, the God of this moment in your life, the God of your obsession, of your current confusion, of your momentary need, of your quiet place, of your search.
Your heart desires a face to face meeting. Will you seek out one of Mine?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha