'Unity and Humanity in a World Gone Mad': Purim's Powerful Proposal

Kafka\ Before the Law

Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. “It is possible,” says the gatekeeper, “but not now.” The gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third.” The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, “I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything.” During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. He becomes childish and, since in the long years studying the gatekeeper he has also come to know the fleas in his fur collar, he even asks the fleas to help him persuade the gatekeeper. Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things considerably to the disadvantage of the man. “What do you still want to know now?” asks the gatekeeper. “You are insatiable.” “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.”

"The Scroll of Esther is all about revealing and concealing. On the deepest theological level, even God is concealed; God's name is never mentioned. Ironically, however, the Rabbis (Chullin 139b) stress that the very name of Esther (Ester) reveals God's absence, applying God's own promise to Moses prior to his death.... The circumstances alluded to in this verse from Deuteronomy are applied to the days of Esther and Mordechai, perhaps implying God's abandonment of the Jewish people and their eventual destruction. Similarly, much of what is apparent on the surface of the narrative masks a different reality." Cohen, D. N. J. (2012). Masking and Unmasking Ourselves: Interpreting Biblical Texts on Clothing & Identity (1 edition). Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights.

"Masquerading also alludes to the miracle of Purim, which was "masked" within the laws of nature...Even the name of the Megillah and its heroine, Esther, allude to what is "hidden" or "masked". The Gemara asks: 'Where is Esther's name alluded to in the Torah? And the answer given is that it is alluded to in the verse: "And I will surely hide My face." For this reason we wear masks to emphasize the symbolism of camouflage."

Isaac Sender, The Commentators' Al Hanissim: Purim

From Rabbi Or Rose 'G-d and the Human Face

The Ropshitzer (as he is called by Hasidim) begins his commentary by quoting his teacher, Rabbi Mendl of Rymanov, who asserts that at Sinai the people of Israel heard “nothing from the mouth of God other than the letter aleph of the first utterance—‘Anokhi, I am the Lord Your God’ (Exodus 20:2).**” In other words, what the Israelites heard at Sinai from God was undifferentiated sound or the “sound of silence,” for a freestanding aleph makes no sound at all. In either case, this interpretation is a significant revision of the biblical text (see Exodus 20:1), as it denies that God articulated any specific content to Israel.

What leads this Hasidic master to reach such a daring conclusion? He bases his comment on a statement from the book of Psalms, “One thing God has spoken but two things I have heard” (62:12). That is to say, while the Divine-human encounter is pregnant with meaning, it always requires interpretation to determine its significance for an individual or community.

Following his teacher’s comments about the aural dimension of the revelation, the Ropshitzer inquires about what the Israelites saw at Sinai. This is a thorny question because in the book of Deuteronomy there are two contradictory statements about the issue. Deuteronomy 4:15 states, “You saw no image when the Lord your God spoke to you,” but just one chapter later it reads, “The Lord spoke with you face to face at the mountain” (5:4).

The Ropshitzer’s resolution of this contradiction builds upon Rabbi Mendel’s insight about the aleph. He states that while God was indeed formless at Sinai, the people did see a representation of the Divine—the letter aleph. Where did the Israelites see the aleph? Was it projected in the sky as a sign of God’s presence, did it take the form of a pillar of fire or a cloud of smoke? No, the aleph appeared on the faces of the people of Israel.

Thinking visually, the Ropshitzer explains that if one deconstructs the figure of the aleph, detaching the upper and lower markings from the central line, the components can be restructured to create two eyes and a nose, the outline of a human face.

He goes on to say that each eye resembles the letter yud (the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet), and the nose between them looks like a vav (the sixth letter). And when one adds up the two yuds and the vav they equal 26 (10+10+6=26). Amazingly, this number is the same as God’s most sacred name—Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh (10+5+6+5=26), sometimes rendered as “Yahweh” in English, but considered ineffable, unpronounceable, by Jewish authorities.

So what does all of this fanciful exegesis mean? It means, according to the Ropshitzer, that “every human face” represents both the essence of Torah—the aleph—and the sanctity of God’s name—Yud, Heh, Vav, Heh. It means that at Sinai the community of Israel came to a heightened awareness of the holiness of every person in their midst—from the prophet to the water carrier, from the priest to the wood chopper. As the Ropshitzer points out, this notion is first articulated in the book of Genesis (1:27), where the Bible describes Adam, the first human, as a being created “in the image of God.”

The implication of such teachings is that every person—Jew and non-Jew alike (since we are all descendents of Adam and Eve)—must be treated as a holy being, as a bearer of revelation, as a unique manifestation of the Divine. This is the meaning, says the Ropshitzer, of the teaching in Psalm 16:8, “I set the Lord before me continually.” In his words, “The seal of the Holy Blessed One is literally on our faces.”

From Emmanuel Levinas Elevations: The Height of the Good in Rosenzweig and Lévinas (trs. by Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, pp. 86-87).

“There is first the very uprightness of the face, its upright exposure, without defense. The skin of the face is that which stays most naked, most destitute. It is the most naked,though with a decent nudity.... The face is meaning all by itself... it leads you beyond. The face of the other, whether masked by make-up, ear- rings, artificial coloring, scarves, and so forth encounters me directly and profoundly. Face to face encounter with the other discloses the others’ weakness and mortality. Naked and destitute, the face commands: Do not leave me in solitude. We ought to welcome, be hospitable to, the Other who encounters us, as the stranger who comes to me in my mundane, self-centered existence demanding from me a Here I am. Levinas is clear that what is given in the face-to-face encounter is the fact of another’s independent expression.