The Future and Past of Futurist Studies

Photo by Nava Crispe 2012

One of the ‘miraculous’ features of the Temple of ancient Israel (which we hope will be speedily reconstituted with certain enhancements as it is high time we upgraded to the 3.0 version), was known as the showbread or lechem hapanim. It was laid out on a special table (the show table) or shulchan hapanim. Most interestingly, this bread had a supernatural element to it that seemed to circumvent ordinary thermodynamics.

The showbread would be laid out for a week and when it was placed on the table it was freshly made and still warm from the oven. Yet, a week later (and I don’t this was the work of preservatives, although this was certainly ‘wonder bread’) when the bread was taken off the table, it was still warm just as it had been on the day it was placed there a week earlier.

What can we learn from this today? Why would be want to reproduce this as soon as possible?

For the answer we have to deconstruct the Hebrew expressions themselves. Lechem is “bread.” In the Torah it is considered the archetypal food. The metaphoricity of bread as emblematic of all foods speaks to our capacity to internalize that which is external to the degree that it becomes a part of us, and once it is properly assimilated, we may be nourished and sustained by it. Our conscious reflection on the experiences that we have in life, which appear to us as coming from ‘out-there’ in the objective world, must be ingested and then digested. They become food for thought.

But why is this object of meditation tagged as “show” bread? Is it intended to be demonstrative in some way? Is it like running a simulation? Here the word for “show” is actually panim which literally means “face.” To put a face on some experience that we’re processing would imply allowing it to become expressive through the constellation of its features. Faces are identifiable.

Yet, panim also carries other meanings worthy of our consideration. This word alludes to a certain spacial-temporal situatedness.

One thinks of the English idiom ‘to face forward.’ The “back,” or achor in Hebrew, establishes the reverse direction. ‘Front (face) and back’ thus become ‘forward and reverse’ drives in the soul and psyche. To be propelled forward, to face an upcoming situation head on (that is directly), contrasts with regression or receding into the background. In sum, the face beckons advancement.

Panim also conjures a distinct temporal orientation. Consider the Hebrew cousin of this word–lefnai (literally ‘to’ or ‘for the face’) which translates as ‘before.’ What lays before me in time is the future. We face the future. We don’t want to go back into the past (in the sense of undoing all progress). Achorai (from achor ‘back’) therefore, means ‘afterwords.’ The ‘aft’ direction in time is that which I’ve already put behind me. Looking at the world in the rear view mirror is focusing on historical studies.

According to Sefer Yetzirah, one of the earliest works of Kabbalah, everything (including Hebrew words) has three dimensions to it. Starting with the literal meaning of a word as a concrete object, we can tunnel into it and recover its metaphoric significance as far as world, year and soul. World is the dimension of space. Year represents time. And soul, evokes a psychological dimension. There exists tremendous overlap between these three dimensions. Each metaphoric dimension stores some meaning within the domains of the other. They are throughly entangled.

Our first definition of panim to be unearthed was ‘face’ in the sense of spacial advance. The second was facing a future time. The third which we will now meet and greet is panim as penimiut or the ‘inner’ dimension of a person. As is commonly suggested in many cultures, the Torah also regards the face as the window to the soul (psyche). Therefore, Penimiut may also capture the sense of the word interiority.

Weaving these three definitions together, it becomes clear that on a symbolic level, the ‘show bread’ is meant to be a study meal wherein the student partakes of future studies, focuses on fresh advancements and tries to internalize their meaning and be nourished by them. Moreover, it must remain a ‘hot’ topic. The content of our learning about the future is “baked” in the oven of the mind (‘moach’ is mem-chet in Hebrew which, when reversed, spells cham or chet-mem which means ‘hot’ or ‘warm’). Allowing one’s study to nourish all aspects of one’s life and body comes when one allows that knowledge to stay warm and to embody it by being a living example of one who innovates and strives to accelerate the arrival of the best possible future.

Future studies demands a person with vision (one ‘who sees that which is being born.’) Having the right vision and optimistic outlook can even heat up or warm all of our experiences just like bread under a heat lamp–only in this case the radiation is coming out of the eyes. As every fan of Superman knowns, he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes that can melt any obstacle in his way. We can too. Superman was a Jewish fiction that secretly popularized the mystery of this enduring warm ‘showbread’. Jewish futurism, unlike the dystopic imagination of so many SciFi writers is profoundly utopic. The promise of the future remains warm even when ‘natural’ law proclaims it impossible. Beyond that, it warms us. It keeps us warm spiritually during the coldest of times.

Finally, since the showbread was showcased on the show table, we can simply say that this is a table with the same futurist orientation. A table denotes a means of contextualizing the future (the showbread) that we have been learning about. It’s all about placing it in the right context so that people may come and partake of it. We need to frame reflections on the future properly. They require the right platform for distribution. The root of the word for “table,” shulchan, is shlach which means “to send out,” and shaliach as in an “emissary, an ambassador.” We need people who can warmingly envision the future–to be messengers and emissaries from the future to the present– those who can explain it and inspire it. We need a table so that all may come and eat. And if we’re all sitting around the table, if there is bread for all of us, then perhaps the future can be made present (or as William Gibson suggests ‘its already here’) and be evenly distributed. In doing so the showbread and show table transform (and are retranslated) into the bread of presence (in that panim can imply ‘being present to’ or ‘presence’ as in ‘I am before you’, that is, ‘I am present to you’) into that which is on the table for discussion today.

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