How Do We See One Another? The Challenge of Getting Past First Impressions

I want to describe a conversation I had while in Israel this summer.  It has to do with how we see one another.

While our rabbinic group was involved with its program at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a group of Christian theologians were simultaneously involved in their own program. As we’ve done for the past several summers, we had a few joint sessions with the Christian leaders. 

For one session we joined in small groups to discuss the concept of the Jews as the chosen people.

A rabbinic colleague and I joined with a Baptist minister from Massachusetts.  She spoke to us about the experience of being African American and serving a largely white congregation for several years before taking an administrative role in the church.

Ultimately she shared with us her theological perspective on the Jews as chosen people:  While Christians acquired a special relationship with God through faith in Jesus, Jews had, and continue to have, a special relationship by virtue of God’s covenant with us which preceded the Christian covenant.

For me, there were several powerful and illuminating moments in our time together.  Before we started to discuss the topic at hand, before we heard the above perspective on the Jews as chosen, we chatted a bit about our work and our families.  As we all were speaking about our children’s summer experiences, the minister mentioned that her son, a middle school student, was spending the summer at math camp. 

My colleague said she knew a math teacher in the community where the minister lived and hoped it wasn’t the minister’s son’s teacher, given that he needed to spend the summer in math camp.  

The minister explained that her son was in math camp so he could get a jump on calculus in anticipation of high school.  She went on to tell us that she’s an engineer by training and she thinks it’s important for children to achieve as strong a foundation in math as possible before they get to college.

Let’s just take a moment to think about that conversation – what was said and what was assumed.  It happened very quickly and it took me awhile to process it.  There is nothing shameful about learning math over the summer for remedial purposes, but that was assumed, not revealed.  

The conversation continued.  The minister described a lecture she heard in which the lecturer described how sad he was that each successive generation of American Jews was becoming more and more white.  She interpreted that to mean that he was distressed that the Jews were assimilating more and more into the wider society.

The minister said she took exception to that.  She felt the lecturer, though well-meaning and trying to make a point regarding assimilation, just wasn’t feeling what it might mean for someone to have no choice regarding “how white to be.”

And then she shared with us how nervous she gets every time her son, whom she’d spoken about earlier, goes to the local mall.  She tells him not to wear his hood over his head, a style which many black and white kids have adopted, because it could cause trouble for him as a black teen.

Well, by the time we got to the official topic about the Jews as the chosen people we already had a lot to think about. 

I want to challenge us to think about how we see, to consider the assumptions we make, the conclusions we draw, the empathy we have or don’t have, based on what we see. 

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an entire book called Blink about how quickly we draw conclusions about people the instant we set eyes on them.

There’s a psychology experiment where participants are asked to look at a series of pictures that flash very quickly on a screen and they have to respond quickly to indicate their associations, whether positive or negative. 

It’s very revealing, and often people who participate in the experiment are surprised to discover their prejudices.  By prejudices, I mean the associations that they have just based on seeing.

I want to analyze a passage from this morning’s Torah reading that I think can shed some light on what it means to see another human being.

This morning’s Torah reading deals in part with the pursuit of צדק tzedek, justice.  

The Israelites are told to appoint judges and officers in order to administer justice.  And then, Moses tells the people, לא תכיר פנים lo takir panim.  The New Jewish Publication Society translates, “you shall not be partial.” Literally the words mean, ״you shall not recognize faces.״

Elsewhere in the Torah we see similar phrases, all of them intended to discourage the judge from favoring one party or another based on appearance.

Interestingly, the word panim, face, is used in the Torah to indicate identity.  Before Jacob means Esau, he wrestles with this being, calls the place where he wrestled פניאל pni’el, the face of God.

When he finally meets up with Esau, suspecting that Esau might kill him out of revenge, and instead they embrace and weep, Jacob says, ראיתי פניך כראות פני אלהים raiti panecha kir’ot pnei elohim.  To see your face is like seeing the face of God.

In light of the way the Torah understands panim, the face as connected, not only with identity, but with the spark of God’s essence that we bear, perhaps we can understand “don’t be partial; don’t recognize faces” as follows:

Don’t pretend that you can recognize someone’s essence just by looking at them.  Don’t imagine that the appearance of another gives you a substantial connection to the other.

Unless and until you are prepared, like Jacob, to engage, to struggle, to reconsider and to risk, your recognition will remain superficial.

The potential for tzedek, for justice, begins with one person taking the risk to begin to get to know another more deeply.  It truly gains momentum when we, like Jacob, are capable of seeing p’nei elohim, God’s face, in someone else. 

Study after study has shown that people’s appreciation for diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, ideology, sexuality and other realms only really improves as they get to know others from all walks of life beyond the superficial.

Then לא תכיר פנים lo takir panim – the superficial judging of the face – becomes פני אלהים pnei elohim – the ability to see the universal behind every face.

It’s a start, it’s a spark, it happens a little here and a little there, because the instinct to judge based on superficial appearance is (paradoxically) so deeply rooted, so instinctive. 

But religion, at its best, is about transcending our instincts.  It's also about the transition from תהו ובהו tohu vavohu – the primordial chaos out of which we emerged and which remains around us and within us – to קדושה kedusha – the potential to progress and to rise up and raise up.

Why is it that before we say, קדוש קדוש קדוש kadosh kadosh kadosh we imitate the angels who turned left and right toward one another – זה אל זה zeh el zeh? 

Perhaps because the march from chaos to kedusha (holiness) from anarchy to tzedek (justice) requires us to turn toward one another, to look at one another and to go back again multiple times to look more closely.  

We suffer when we do only the most superficial zeh el zeh.  We suffer when we allow ourselves to see one another only in the most superficial ways.

The Torah invites us to look more closely at each other and it’s not easy.

But when we consider the people we took the time to see more closely, especially people who look and act differently than we do, we tend to be very grateful for having done so. 

Once we discover the face of God in another person, it’s hard to go back to the other kind of seeing.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on August 22, 2015