A Phenomenology of Involvement without Interference in the Rabbinic and Philosophic Traditions

Displacements

—There is nothing a man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching towards him, and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange. In the dark, the fear of the unexpected touch can mount to panic. Even clothes give insufficient security: it is easy to tear them and pierce through to the naked, smooth, defenseless flesh of the victim.

All the distances which men create round themselves are dictated by this fear.

Elias Canetti (11)

What could be stranger than contact with an angel? The damage due to touch forms the central element of the famous Biblical narrative where Jacob wrestles with a man said to be the angel of Esau. This unusual confrontation leads to the downfall of Esau’s angle but not before “he [the angel] touched him [Jacob] in the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint [dislocated]….” (12)

The damage from this fight highlights how improper touch can put one “out of joint” or “displace” a part of oneself. Numerous commentaries liken the displacement in Jacob’s thigh to the collective phenomenon of exile. Negative contact created displaced persons.  Rashi attaches to this verse another from the prophets in order to further elaborate the meaning of this “displacement,” תקע, calling upon Jeremiah’s descriptions of fallen Jerusalem where G-d calls out “lest My soul be alienated from you.” (13) Applied to the human subject, the exile of the soul or inner self, constitutes the manifest danger from improper touch. (14)

The Torah also provides us with other excellent examples of the pitfalls of touch that lead to the phenomenon of exile. Each scriptural staging of this exilic syndrome as a consequence of “spots” of vulnerability serves to amplify the main point expressed with Jacob’s “dislocation.” Consider the miscommunication that unfolded in the Garden of Eden drama. There Eve, in speaking to the serpent, adds to the original commandment expressed through Adam prohibiting the eating from the tree of knowledge the additional idea that “neither shall you touch it.” (15) This is actually the first example of touch in the Torah and a prohibited, “miscommunicated” form of touch at that.

Reflecting on the Hebrew root for touch in all of these contexts (נגע) we can continue to elaborate the scope of its usage by citing a teaching from Sefer Yetzirah [The Book of Formation]: “אין ברע למטה מנגע” [“there is nothing within evil lower than affliction”] where נגע [nega] means an affliction (like leprosy, that is a skin disease) or a striking, a blow, even an infection. Cast from the same root as touch, נגע denotes the most severe form of negativity, the nature of which is only brought into relief in comparison to a parallel statement in Sefer Yetzirah: that “אין בטוב למעלה מענג” [“there is nothing within good that is higher than pleasure”] where the letters that comprise the word ענג [oneg] are simply a rearrangement of the letters נגע. All of this suggests that while נגע as touch may be a source of pleasure or ענג, it may also destroy its constitution and inflict pain (נגע) in place of that pleasure.

The dialectic of pleasure and pain is found in the distinction between the caress and the blow. Masquerading as a close relative of the caress, the handshake may, under certain circumstances, be delivering a blow of sorts in that the discomfort transferred reflects an energy that exceeds the applied pressure of the palm of the hand. Stepping out from behind its natural foliage, awkward and uncomfortable contacts reveal this twofold possibility: to either imbue an exchange with meaning as the correlative to pleasure or to cheapen or even deny that meaning in the pleasureless and passive movement that loses the individual.

Taking skin as a “cultural border” as it is sometimes called, the affliction of an individual as the root of all diseases manifests itself in a scriptural enactment of personal exile. Known as נגע צרעת [nega tzaraat], this skin affliction, or the sense of touch, changes one’s outer appearance and results in being placed in quarantine outside the camp for a short period of time. Does this not provide a model for the social outcast, for individual exile from within a community? Does it not result from the affliction of the skin? Translated differently, the touching of skin and only skin, the contact with mere surfaces, estranges the inner being of the individual; it alienates the soul leaving only an empty body. (16) The type of touch that causes this situation stems from what has been called “a false transient pleasure” tied to the false promises of the libidinal economy that have made a fetish of it. As a commodity of exchange, its value quickly evaporates. (17)

Touch can be deceptive or even self-deceptive. The way in which we choose to read into our casual contacts enlists the full faculty of the imagination to walk alongside our sense perceptions. Jean-Paul Sartre provides a striking example of our bad faith attempts to neutralize the potentially harmful effects of the captivating charm of physical proximity where the spark of an erotic charge builds and bridges the minimal remaining gap in unintended ways.

Take the example of a woman who has consented to go out with a particular man for the first time. She knows very well the intentions which the man who is speaking to her cherishes regarding her. She knows also that it will be necessary sooner or later for her to make a decision. But she does not want to realize the urgency; she concerns herself only with what is respectful and discreet in the attitude of her companion….She is profoundly aware of the desire which she inspires, but the desire cruel and naked would humiliate and horrify her. Yet she would find no charm in a respect which would only be respect. In order to satisfy her, there must be a feeling which is addressed wholly to her personality—i.e., to her full freedom—and which would be a recognition of her freedom. But at the same time this feeling must be wholly desire; that is, it must address itself to her body as object. This time then she refuses to apprehend the desire for what it is….But then let us suppose he takes her hand. This act of her companion risks changing the situation by calling for immediate decision. To leave the hand there is to consent in herself to flirt, to engage herself. To withdraw it is to break the troubled and unstable harmony which gives the hour its charm. The aim is to postpone the moment of decision as long as possible. We know what happens next; the young woman leaves her hand there, but she does not notice that she is leaving it. She does not notice because it happens by chance that she is at this moment all intellect. She draws her companion up to the most lofty regions of sentimental speculation; she speaks of Life, of her life, she shows herself in her essential aspect—a personality, a consciousness. And during this time the divorce of the body from the soul is accomplished; the hand rests inert between the warm hands of her companion—neither consenting nor resisting—a thing.

We shall say that this woman is in bad faith….She has disarmed the actions of her companion by reducing them to being only what they are; that is, to existing in the mode of the in-itself, But she permits herself to enjoy his desire, to the extent that she will apprehend it as not being what it is, will recognize its transcendence. Finally while sensing profoundly the presence of her own body—to the degree of being disturbed perhaps—she realizes herself as not being her own body, and she contemplates it as though from above as a passive object to which events happen but which can neither provoke them nor avoid them because all its possibilities are outside it. (18)

From Sartre’s dramatization we can incorporate another pivotal expression from Kabbalistic literature: the concept known as touching and not touching or מטי ולא מטי [mati v’lo mati]. Use of this phrase stems from commentary literature but begins to establish itself as a technical term in Zoharic literature. (19) While present in numerous earlier texts such as those of Cordovero, it does not cement its position as a common recurrent function in the larger tapestry of kabbalistic cosmology until the dissemination of Lurianic Kabbalah. (20)

Some have suggested that the “touching” element refers to קירוב הדעת [kiruv hada’at], the “closeness and affinity of consciousness” which gravitates to the other person, though with the side effect of causing a person to lose his or her “objectivity” in that closeness. The “not touching element” compares with the idea of נקיות הדעת [nikiot hada’at] or the “clarity of consciousness” that maintains its distance and therefore holds at least the pretense of objectivity. To have only one without the other would result in an imbalance. We are cautioned not to burn up or out from intense emotional closeness where the mind is held hostage by the heart who employs the rational faculty in the forced labor of rationalizing its emotions. So too, detachment, as if one were to hold the other continually at a distance, would sever the lines of communication and starve the senses, whose only representations of the other would be conjured in abstraction substituting the concept for the person. As a balanced approach, the phrase touching and not touching could perhaps be better rendered as “involvement without interference.” Maximal involvement with minimal interference ensures the presence to the other as other, the gift of oneself without the loss of personal freedom, the care and concern minus the overbearing and suffocating weight of intrusiveness. (21)

Factored into Sartre’s example above, where “he takes her hand” and this “risks changing the situation by calling for a decision” whether to “consent” or “break” off by not consenting, we see immediately the undercurrent at work. She is “aware of the desire she inspires” and “this feeling must be wholly desire” in the sense of total involvement—but with what? Is it with “her body as object?” Or do we hold out hope that “there must be a feeling addressed wholly to her personality—i.e., to her full freedom?” Obviously, the “recognition of her freedom” implies non-interference, the untouchable in the sense of the ungraspable inner self that is not offered even in the event that “he takes her hand.” While desire in the carnal sense risks reducing her to “her body as object,” as graspable, delivered in the sense of touch, this form of total involvement dislocates the subject outside of the body, where, detached “she is at this moment all intellect.” Thus as a picture of exile, the exile is doubled to the extent that she is at once “not being her own body” and also “in bad faith” to the degree that she fools herself in this all-too-common deception i.e. she is unaware or untruthful with herself as to her condition of exile.

¹¹ Crowds and Power p.15.

¹² Genesis 32:26 “ויגע בכף ירכו ותקע כף ירך יעקב…” The translation used here mostly follows The Jerusalem Bible but with some modifications from other translations notably the Artscroll Stone Edition of the Tanach.

¹³ Jeremiah 6:6 “פן תקע נפשי ממך” where presumable the term “soul” would refer to the Divine presence. Here the translation follows the Artscroll edition.

¹⁴ Much of the present work is in conversation with an essay “איסור נגיעה ותיקונו” by Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh on the Kabbalistic meaning of the rabbinical prohibition of touch between the sexes. The idea that touch is depicted negatively in the context of a conflict in this narrative of the Torah suggests the “loss of personal identity” or “identity theft” that puts a person “out-of-joint” with oneself. See p.1 and following for additional insights and innovations from the perspective of this contemporary exponent of Jewish mystical thought.

¹⁵ Genesis 3:3 following The Jerusalem Bible translation. This episode is also suited for a kind of Midrashic speculation. The idea that the additional measure of guarding touch would block the act of eating can be significant on a number of levels. For instance, we find that sexual relations are likened to eating in Talmudic literature (presumable because of the experience of “consuming” the other.) Others relate the idea of the eating of this tree of knowledge to the common Biblical euphemism for sexual relations. The essence of the problem was premature engagement in sexual relations i.e. eating of the tree. The obstacle that tripped them up would seem to have been a misunderstanding of the nature of touch—since, after the serpent pushes her into the tree and she doesn’t die the conclusion is that “touch” is without consequence and therefore analogous to the eating itself. Either this entails a conflation of contact and sexuality (where both are equally harmless and casual) or else recognizes no correlation between touch and sexuality. Touch appears in the latter case, in the neutral, stripped of its erotic intentionality or at least self-aware of it enough to be able to bracket and distance oneself from it through conscious effort. Let this suffice to spark the imagination and muse over what other possibilities the darshan [interpretor] might mine from these openings.

¹⁶ See Leviticus 13:3 “וראה הכהן את הנגע בעור הבשר…” and 13:5 “…והסגירו הכהן את הנגע שבעת ימים” where the correlation between temporary social displacement and alienation, literally to be/feel “closed off,” as though one were hermetically if not hermeneutically sealed in on oneself, unable to come out from inside and depressed to be covered in skin. See also “איסור הנגיעה ותיקונו” p.1.

¹⁷ This follows Rabbi Ginsburgh’s description in “איסור הנגיעה ותיקונו” p.2: “ה’נגיעות’ גורמות לאדם ענג שקרי חולף – ענג של עולם התמורות המתחלפות….”

¹⁸ Being and Nothingness. P.55-56.

¹⁹ See Zohar I 15b, 65a, II 268b, III 164b, Tosefot (to the Zohar) 273b, etc..

²⁰ See for instance in Etz Chaim where the term forms the name of the 7^th gate called שער מטי ולא מטי. The term also enjoys continued use in Chassidic discourses primarily from the Chabad movement. See for example Sefer Hamaamorim 5666 from Dov Baer of Lubavitch pp. 41-48.

²¹ Again the schema of involvement without interference as the model extrapolated from the dialectic of affinity of consciousness and clean or clear consciousness follows the suggestions and insights set out in Rabbi Ginsburgh’s essay on the subject. See particularly p.2 “איסור נגיעה ותיקונו”.

http://www.interinclusion.org/inspirations/out-of-touch-part-3/

Print PDF