Seeing God Face to Face?

One of the best parts of yeshiva life is Seder Erev, or night learning.  It lasts from 8-10 PM, every weeknight (which in Israel also includes Sunday).  From the beginning, we were encouraged to use Seder Erev as an opportunity to explore all sorts Jewish topics outside of Tanach and Talmud.  This year, along with my chevruta (learning partner) for Seder Erev, I have explored Rambam's introduction to Pirkei Avot, Rav Hutner on Chanukah, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz on Jewish thought. 

But perhaps one of the most interesting things that I have learned during Seder Erev is something that I just finished this past week. It was an essay in Hebrew titled "Panim b'Panim," from Nahalech B'ragesh, by Rabbi Shimshon Gershon Rosenberg, or Rav Shagar as he is referred to in Hebrew (Shagar is the Hebrew acronym of his name). He lived in Israel from 1949 to 2007.  He is known for his deep Hasidic thought and his unique approach to Talmud.  Nahalech B'ragesh is a collection of his essays on Jewish thought.

"Panim b'Panim" is about a seeming contradiction in the Torah.  Moshe asked God to see God's face but God answered negatively saying that "No man can see My face and live" (Exodus 33:23). However, later in the book of Numbers (12:8) God says "I speak to him [Moshe] mouth to mouth in a [clear] image, not in a riddle, and he looks at the picture of the Lord."  Furthermore, in the book of Deuteronomy (5:4), when Moshe recounts the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, Moshe says "The Lord spoke with you face to face [panim b'panim] from the mountain in fire." How could it be that Moshe, the greatest prophet as God Himself attests to in the book of Numbers, was denied the privilege of seeing God's face when it appears as if God did reveal his face to all of Israel?

Rav Shagar brings three answers, which together provide insight on the nature of divine revelation.  First he quotes Rambam who deals with the same question.   In short, Rambam distinguishes between two ways of knowing someone: knowing through description and knowing through recognition.  As Rav Shagar explains, the difference is the same as seeing a girl's profile from a matchmaker and actually meeting the girl.  As I'm sure anyone who has ever been set up on a blind date can confirm, one cannot actually know the essence of a person only by knowing through description; one can only really know another person by actually meeting that person. Thus at Mount Sinai, God revealed his essence when he gave Israel the Torah.  However Moshe asked for knowledge of God that was more like filling out a profile on Him.  But as God tells him, such a knowing of Him is impossible for mortal man.  While alive, man can only hope to glimpse at the back of God.

Rav Shagar then quotes a couple of midrashim.  The first midrash (Pesikta d'Rabbi Kahane 12) deals with the issue of God appearing in many different forms in Tanach: sometimes as a warrior, sometimes as a teacher, sometimes as a scribe, sometimes as a young man.  However, they are descriptions of the same God, which is why the first statement that God made to Israel at Sinai was "I am the Lord, your God" (Exodus 20:2). Rav Shagar uses this midrash to show that the rabbis of the Talmud were able to claim that God appears in different forms and speaks differently to different people, based on each individual's level of comprehension.  However, that did not lead the rabbis to believe in relativism. The amazing thing about God's revelation to Israel at Sinai, according to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (a 13th century Spanish rabbi), was that one voice spoke to a nation.  For at Sinai, God did not say "I am the Creator of the heavens and earth," but rather, "I am the Lord, your God who took you out of Egypt."  In other words, Sinai was not a universal revelation but an intimate revelation between God and His people, Israel. (Undoubtedly, this intimate revelation is the source for the wonderful image painted by the rabbis that at Sinai, Israel was the bride and God was the bridegroom. The rabbis even extended this metaphor to explain all of the Song of Songs.)

Finally Rav Shagar quotes a famous midrash about the drama surrounding Israel's accepting of the Torah. The midrash says that God held over Mount Sinai over Israel and demanded that Israel accept the Torah or else where they are standing will be their grave. Israel answered, "We will do and we will hear!" Afterwards the angels put two crowns on the heads of all Israelites: one for exclaiming "We will do!" and one for exclaiming "We will hear!" "We will do" represents Israel's obedience to God while "We will hear" represents Israel's personal autonomy and their desire to know the reasons for the mitzvoth.  In fact, Martin Buber reads this phrase as "We will do in order to hear."  Indeed, Rav Shagar claims that Israel merited seeing God's face because Israel showed their willingness to understand the mitzvoth as well as to perform them. This idea is echoed in "The Temptation of Temptation" by Emmanuel Levinas (a French-Jewish philosopher who lived from 1906-1995. This essay is actually a commentary of the same midrash. Rav Bigman, a proponent of Levinas, urged us to read this particular essay. I read it twice: once on my own and once with my Seder Erev chevruta.).  There Levinas claims that only once Israel accepted the mitzvoth were they able to understand the mitzvoth.  As Rav Shagar writes, faith was necessary for revelation and the accepting of the Torah.  He adds, "Is this not the essence of the rebellion of modern man against God, for his constant equalizing movements [i.e. humanism, communism]…? This is why we need two crowns, the freedom granted by 'We will listen' and the faith required for 'We will do.'" This is also in contrast to Moshe who, when he requested to see God's face, only cared about reaching the spiritual height of seeing God's face.  However Israel saw God's face because they also agreed to obey Him and follow His commandments.

-- Akiva Lichtenberg