Countenancing God: Facial Revelation and Ritual in Sefer ... IU Workshop Paper.pdfHaskell Working Paper 2 revealed the Zohar’s accounts of mystical experience. Hartley Lachter’s

Ellen Haskell For Indiana University Borns Jewish Studies Program Faculty-Graduate Student Workshop Fall 2017

Countenancing God: Facial Revelation and Ritual in Sefer ha-Zohar

Physiognomists were clearly wrong when they claimed that they could judge people based on the appearance of their faces. …However, the fact that physiognomists were

wrong about many things does not automatically invalidate all of their claims. The same studies that prove that people cannot accurately do what physiognomists claimed was

possible consistently show that they were, nevertheless, better than chance. Thus, physiognomists’ main claim—that the character is to some extent displayed on one’s

face—seems to be correct (while being rather upsetting). –Michael Kosinski and Yilun Wang1

This image of a human includes all images, and all are included within it… This one, when they look at his outer face –a face that stands before eyes of the heart– they love it.

–Sefer ha-Zohar 2:74a2

Introduction

One of the many things that makes Sefer ha-Zohar, the multi-authored thirteenth-

century Castilian work that became the canonical text of Kabbalah, so compelling is its

ability to say and to not say at once.3 Long studied for its influential theology, in recent

years the Zohar has begun to yield a wealth of knowledge about topics once thought

largely absent from in its pages. Melila Hellner-Eshed’s A River Flows from Eden

1 Michael Kosinski and Yilun Wang, “Authors’ Note” accompanying the article “Deep Neural Networks are More Accurate than Humans at Detecting Sexual Orientation from Facial Images,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (forthcoming). The authors’ notes can be found at the following web address: docs.google.com/document/d/11oGZ1Ke3wK9E3BtOFfGfUQuuaSMR8AO2WfWH3aVke6U/edit

2 The edition of Sefer ha-Zohar used in this study is Reuven Moshe Margaliot, ed., Sefer ha-Zohar al Hamishah Humshei Torah, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kook, 1999). Translations of biblical and Zoharic texts are my own, unless otherwise indicated.

3 For a list of sources regarding the Zohar’s composition, see note 55 below.

Haskell Working Paper

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revealed the Zohar’s accounts of mystical experience. Hartley Lachter’s Kabbalistic

Revolution explained Zoharic theology as empowering political discourse, while my own

work Mystical Resistance uncovered the Zohar’s role in resistance to Christian

domination. None of these topics is addressed plainly in the Zohar’s pages, yet each is an

important aspect of the work as a whole. In this project, I turn to another under-exposed

Zoharic topic: the Zohar’s teachings on the human face and face to face encounter. These

teachings reveal how the kabbalists enlist their own bodies in the production of

themselves as mystics– a process inextricably tied to their participation in ethical

engagement.

The Zohar’s teachings on the human face bring together two seemingly

incompatible aspects of medieval Jewish thought. On the one hand, these teachings

engage the most transcendent aspects of esoteric revelation, since the face is never simply

a face but is always already a window on the divine in whose image the human is

formed.4 In this sense, the kabbalists understand the face as a potential site of revelation–

a revelation fully realized when the Zoharic companions encounter Shekhinah (the Divine

Presence) in each other’s faces. On the other hand, the Zohar’s teachings on the face are

tied inextricably to medieval physiognomy and its claim that faces and their features

reveal individual character to those with the knowledge to interpret such signs.

Physiognomy’s historical role in human subjugation justifiably categorizes it for

contemporary readers as a dangerous pseudo-science that inspires unethical conduct.

Indeed, the intent of the Kosinski and Wang study quoted above is to deter discrimination

rooted in computerized physiognomic diagnoses of sexual orientation. Yet physiognomic

interpretation, ritualized through religious practice, was also a critically important method

for identifying and training kabbalistic practitioners. Tempting though it might be to

separate facial revelation from physiognomic ritual, the Zohar clearly renders them

inseparable. This interdependence is most clear in Zoharic narratives about the

kabbalistic companions. Rabbi Abba, a sage whose face reveals Shekhinah and shines

4 See Yehuda Liebes, “Physiognomy in Kabbalah,” Pe’amim 104 (2005): 27; Moshe Idel, “Panim– On Facial Re-Presentations in Jewish Thought: Some Correlational Instances,” in On Interpretation in the Arts: Interdisciplinary Studies in Honor of Moshe Lazar, ed. Nurit Yaari , Assaph Book Series, ed. Eli Rozik (Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, Tel Aviv University, Israel: 2000), 22-23. Idel reflects on the face as revealing a “correlational theology” that associates the human with the divine.


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with esoteric knowledge, is also a physiognomist who performs miraculous facial

healing.5 Rabbi Hiyya reveals Shekhinah’s face, interprets the faces of students and

strangers, and conducts spiritual therapy through face to face encounter.6

In what follows, I argue that for the Zoharic kabbalists physiognomic discourse is

ethical discourse. Divine revelation emerges from relations among individuals where

ethical interaction is foregrounded, and the premier form of relation is the face to face

encounter. Facial revelation cannot be detached from physiognomic ritual, because

revelatory capability is dependent upon an individual’s moral character, and this

worthiness –as well as the training that cultivates it– is for the kabbalists to a great extent

physiognomically determined. Yet Zoharic physiognomy, as I will show, is not the same

as other methods of physiognomy common to the medieval cultural environment. Instead,

the Zohar draws on prior Jewish esoteric tradition and its own unique theology of cosmic

dynamism to craft a physiognomy that calls for ethical action even as it recognizes the

potential for moral subversion inherent in reading character from physical appearance.

Facial gazing, face to face encounters, and the knowledge that emerges from them

become premier Zoharic methods for ascribing sanctity and revelatory potential to daily

life, cultivating a sense of the transcendent inherent in the familiar that is especially

powerful because it is known and practiced through the kabbalists’ own bodies.

Dynamic Face, Dynamic Cosmos

In the Zohar, the human face is a powerful model for thinking about the self, the

cosmos, and the self and cosmos in relation to each other. Social historians,

anthropologists, and linguists long have observed that the human body is a complex

structure well suited to modeling experiential ways of thinking about other complex

structures such as ritual, social, technological, intellectual, and political fields of

5 Rabbi Abba additionally offers many teachings on divine and human faces

throughout the Zohar. For examples, see Zohar 1:36b, 1:94a-b, 2:64b; 2:83a; 2:88a; 3:78a, 3:84a; 3:89b; 3:147a. For thoughts on Rabbi Abba’s shining face and facial radiance’s connection to Zoharic mystical experience, see Hellner-Eshed, 306-307. Facial illumination is beyond the scope of the current essay.

6 See Zohar 1:190a, 2:94b, 2:163b, and 3:45bff. In this paper I use “h” for the Hebrew letter het.


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knowledge and meaning.7 Scholars of medieval Judaism point to the body as a primary

model for developing religious and political thought.8 Kabbalistic theology itself relies on

the doctrine of imitatio dei, teaching that the human being as microcosm reflects the

divine being as macrocosm, and that macrocosm and microcosm are dynamic and

responsive to each other. The kabbalists inhabit a conceptual universe in which all that

exists stands in relation.

The human face is an ideal model for thinking about this dynamic, relational

cosmology and its ethical implications, because the face itself is always already dynamic

and relational. It is a familiarity that continually de-familirizes and re-familiarizes itself.

Patrizia Magli has called the face a “perpetuum mobile” in which “the roles of its

individual actors, such as the nose, eyes, eyebrows, mouth, all belong to the indefinite

time of their action, to a fluctuating and unstructured logic, one based on the genesis and

relationships between movement, stasis and variations in speed.”9 This inherent

dynamism is amplified when one face encounters another, entering into a face to face

relationship. For the kabbalists, God also is revealed in dynamic relations among sefirot

that form part of a greater whole within the infinity of Ein Sof (Endless God), much as the

face is composed of dynamic features.10 The face to face encounter, by evoking

7 For examples, see Victor Turner, 96, 142, 150; Michael Jackson 132-133;

Lakoff and Johnson, 40; Paul Friedrich, 36. 8 According to Elliot Wolfson, despite medieval calls to escape the demands of

the body, “the flesh continued to serve as the prima materia out of which ritual gestures, devotional symbols, and theological doctrines were fashioned.” Elliot Wolfson, “The Body in the Text: A Kabbalistic Theory of Embodiment,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 95:3 (2005): 480. David Shyovitz notes that for medievals, “‘the body’ functioned simultaneously, and not always, consistently, in overlapping physical, political, and theological registers.” David. I. Shyovitz, A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 74.

9 Patrizia Magli, “The Face and the Soul,” in Fragments for a History of the Human Body: Part Two, eds. Michael Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi (NY: Zone, 1989), 87.

10 For reflection on the “elastic” divine face in rabbinic literature that relate to kabbalistic teachings, see Idel, “Panim,” 26.

The Zohar portrays the divine face in similarly kaleidoscopic fashion, describing facial features that in turn are composed of other features, all in dynamic relation to each other. For a detailed presentation of this topic, see the analysis of Zohar 2:122b-123a in my forthcoming work, Ellen Haskell, “A Composite Countenance: The Divine Face as Mixed


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kaleidoscopic relationships among complex human actors whose faces are in turn

composed of dynamically interacting parts, offers experiential access to ever more

complex and transcendent relationships as macrocosm and microcosm behold and reflect

each other.11 In the Zohar facial encounter is not simply an aspect of macrocosmic

thought. It is the most important aspect of the macrocosmic model.

This model of divine transcendence revealed through the face anticipates

Emmanuel Levinas’ evocation of infinity in face to face encounter. “The idea of infinity,

the infinitely more contained in the less, is concretely produced in the form of a relation

with the face.”12 For Levinas, as for the Zoharic authorship, this encounter is inherently

ethical. “The facing position, opposition par excellence, can be only as a moral

summons.”13 Indeed, as I will show, it is kabbalistic theology’s insistence upon cosmic

and divine dynamism revealed through the human face that produces the Zohar’s ethical

physiognomy and permits the Zohar to expose and critique the moral tensions inherent in

physiognomic teachings.

Revealing the Dynamic Divine

Face to face encounter in the Zohar reaches its greatest potential with the

kabbalists’ manifestation of the divine countenance in and through their own faces.

Human faces do not express divinity in isolation.14 Rather, they collectively become sites

of divine revelation through dynamic encounter.15

Metaphor in Jewish Mysticism,” in Religion, Language, and the Human Mind, ed. Paul Chilton and Monika Kopitowska (Oxford: Oxford University Press, February 2018).

11 For a fascinating look at medieval macrocosmic thought regarding the body, especially among the Hasidei Ashkenaz, see Shyovitz, 73-113. See also Elliot Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature Reflected in the Symbolism of Medieval Kabbalah,” in Judaism and Ecology, ed. Hava Tirosh-Samuelson (Cambridge, MA: distributed by Harvard University Press for the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2002), 305.

12 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 196.

13 Levinas, 196. Levinas also writes, “The epiphany of the face is ethical.” Levinas, 199.

14 For further thoughts on why the kabbalists manifest the divine face collectively rather than individually, see my forthcoming work, “A Composite Countenance: The Divine Face as Mixed Metaphor in Jewish Mysticism,” in Religion, Language, and the


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Sefer ha-Zohar 2:94b

Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Yosi met one night at the tower of Tyre. They stayed

there and rejoiced in each other. Rabbi Yosi said, How glad I am to see the face

of Shekhinah!


Rabbi Yosi, Rabbi Yehudah, and Rabbi Hiyya were traveling on the road. They

met Rabbi Eleazar. When they saw him, they all got down from their donkeys.

Rabbi Eleazar said, Truly, I see the face of Shekhinah! For seeing the pious and

righteous of a generation and meeting them– truly they are the face of

Shekhinah. And why are they called the face of Shekhinah? Because Shekhinah

is hidden within them. She is concealed and they are revealed. For those who are

near to Her are called Her face. And who are they? They are the ones with

whom She adorns Herself to appear before the supernal King. And since you are

here, truly Shekhinah is adorned upon you, and you are her face…For any realm

with which a person is linked is revealed in his face.16

Human Mind, ed. Paul Chilton and Monika Kopitowska (Oxford: Oxford University Press, February 2018).

15 One possible exception to this rule is Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai, the leader of the Zohar’s companions and the person to whom the work is pseudepigraphically attributed. This is perhaps unsurprising, since the Zohar portrays Rabbi Shimon as unique in many ways. In the midst of a teaching on the tenth plague in Egypt, Zohar 2:38a reads, “‘All your males shall appear before the Face of the Lord God (Exodus 34:23).’ Who is the Face of the Lord God? This is Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai! For one who is male of males should appear before him.” This statement is contextually very different from other passages in which the kabbalists refer to each other as the divine face.

16 Classical rabbinic literature also teaches that a person receiving a teacher or close friend is like one receiving the Divine Presence. However, the Zohar’s teachings on such encounters make clear that their significance extends beyond the rabbinic usage. For an overview of relevant rabbinic passages, see Daniel Matt, trans and ed., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. 5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press for Zohar Education Project, Inc., 2009), 5:1-2n3. Numerous rabbinic and Zoharic passages also describe human faces shining to signify spiritual merit. For an example, see Exodus Rabbah 47:6. This essay focuses only on the Zohar’s teachings due to considerations of length.


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In these passages, the Zoharic kabbalists’ face-to-face encounters reveal

Shekhinah– the sefirah associated with Divine Presence.17 When Rabbi Yosi meets his

companion in Zohar 2:94b, he exclaims that he sees Shekhinah’s face. This revelation

occurs as the two kabbalists come together and delight in each other’s company,

suggesting not simply that Rabbi Hiyya looks like the feminine Divine Presence, but

rather that the dynamic interaction between the two men inspires Shekhinah’s

manifestation. Zohar 2:163b further elaborates this concept. There, Rabbi Eleazar

remarks that seeing three of his companions together is seeing Shekhinah’s face. Notably,

both texts employ metaphor, not simile. For Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Eleazar alike, seeing

their companions’ faces is not like seeing the face of God. It is seeing the face of God.

Although this face is normally concealed from humanity, it is revealed through the

medium of the kabbalistic companions’ faces in dynamic relational configurations.

Not just any faces reveal the divine countenance. The kabbalists encounter

divinity through righteous faces. The passage goes on to assert that human faces display

their spiritual allegiance by divulging the “realm” (i.e. holy or unholy) with which they

associate. This teaching is significant because the mystical companions named in the

Zohar’s narrative portions may well represent the text’s medieval Spanish authors.18 The

implication is that the kabbalists who wrote the Zohar understood their group to have

revelatory capabilities grounded in the relations of the group itself, which together

constituted and refracted the face of God. In this way, the Zohar’s teachings on face to

face encounter model the revelatory potential inherent in kabbalistic activity. The text

also presents a level of divine interaction to which a kabbalist may aspire.

In keeping with Kabbalah’s interrelated cosmology, the righteous kabbalists’

faces reciprocally serve Shekhinah in the heavenly realm, as the feminine Presence

adorns Herself with them to appear before the masculine aspect of God as King– a

common sexual metaphor for divine unification in Kabbalah. For the kabbalists, this

17 Kabbalistic theology often considers Shekhinah female, adding some interesting

gender implications to the passage. 18 For the idea that the Zohar’s authors wrote themselves into the Zohar as the

kabbalistic companions, see Yehuda Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, trans. Arnold Schwartz, Stephanie Nakache, and Penina Peli, SUNY Series in Judaica: Hermeneutics, Mysticism, and Religion, ed. Michael Fishbane, Robert Goldenberg, and Arthur Green (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 85-138.


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meeting of masculine and feminine aspects within divinity both symbolizes and inspires

redemption and correct world order. The kabbalists’ faces adorn the divine at a critical

moment for the world’s continuation, becoming incorporated into a peak cosmological

moment. In this way, revelatory face to face encounter works on two levels at once. On

earth among the companions the concealed divine face is made visible through human

faces, while in heaven the companions’ faces appear as divine adornments that facilitate

redemption. Heavenly and earthly realms integrate through facial encounter, and that

integration is an ethical intervention with potential to heal the world.

The kabbalists, by intimating that the divine face is comprised of many human

faces, indicate a complex facial dynamism that extends beyond the merely human.

Shekhinah’s countenance is kaleidoscopic and ever changing. The divine face’s

appearance among human faces depends on the spiritual quality of the human beings in

which it manifests, on which of the mystical companions are present, and on who is

gazing at whom. The unchanging aspect of divine facial revelation is its ethical

component– “the pious and righteous of a generation” compose and reveal the divine

face. When the kabbalists’ countenances take on divine facial characteristics, they are

transformed into vehicles of revelation. This transformation reinforces their desired group

dynamic. Already members of an elite fellowship, they become each other’s path toward

intimacy with and knowledge of God. Each time the companions meet one another

becomes an opportunity for revelation, as spiritual fellowship allows access to divine

encounter.

This revelatory dynamic of face to face encounter is expanded upon in Zohar

1:5a-1:9a, in which Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar meet a mysterious donkey driver who

offers wondrous Torah teachings, eventually revealing himself as the great Rav Hamnuna

Sava before vanishing from the companions’ presence. The event’s aftermath includes

the following speeches.

Sefer ha-Zohar 1:7b

[Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai said to Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar], Surely, this

was a path of the Blessed Holy One! Furthermore, I see that your faces are

transfigured… Rabbi Shimon was frightened and wept… he raised his hands


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above his head and said, Oh that you merited to see Rav Hamnuna Sava, the

light of the Torah, face to face! But I did not merit it. He fell on his face and saw

him uprooting mountains, kindling lights in the palace of King Messiah. He said

to him, Rabbi, in that world you will be among the learned masters before the

Blessed Holy One. From that day he called Rabbi Eleazar his son and Rabbi

Abba Peni-el (Face of God]), “For I have seen God face to face (Genesis

32:31).”19

Sefer ha-Zohar 1:9a

Rabbi Eleazar his [Rabbi Shimon’s] son and Rabbi Abba entered. He [Rabbi

Shimon] said to them, Surely the face of Shekhinah has come! This is why I

called you Peni-el– because you have seen the face of Shekhinah, face to face!

In these passages, facial revelation expands and multiplies as it is transmitted

from one character to another. Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar’s face to face encounter

with Rav Hamnuna Sava (a deceased sage whose appearance on earth is an unusual

revelation) leads to a visionary face to face encounter for Rabbi Shimon, who in turn

renames Abba and Eleazar “Face of God,” since they allowed him a revelatory encounter

and have seen Shekhinah themselves. Each meeting engenders further revelation that

happens in the shifting landscape of the companions’ faces, which become both vehicles

for and affirmations of spiritual transformation.

Zohar 1:7b’s ambiguities and tensions highlight the revelatory experience it

describes. Meeting Hamnuna Sava and learning Torah secrets from him transfigures

Abba and Eleazar’s faces. Upon seeing them, Rabbi Shimon laments that their encounter

was not his own, declares the two companions’ worthiness, bemoans his own

unworthiness, and falls on his face. The fall that conceals his face also transports it,

bringing him to his own revelatory encounter with the great Rav. In that encounter,

Hamnuna Sava proclaims a future encounter in which Rabbi Shimon ultimately will

19 While Genesis 32:31 uses “Penuel” for “Face of God,” the Zohar’s printed

edition makes the facial reference even more explicit by rendering the word “Peni (Face)-El (of God).”


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come before God. Returning from this vision that anticipates further divine encounter,

Rabbi Shimon calls the companions Face of God, implying that he already has seen God

face to face. His claim is tantalizingly unclear. Has Rabbi Shimon already seen God, or

will he see God in the future? Does he see God already in the companions’ transfigured

faces? Does naming the two men “Face of God” mark Rabbi Shimon’s experience, their

own, or that of all involved? Zohar 1:9a is ambiguous as well, because of its circularity.

Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar are Shekhinah’s face because they have seen Shekhinah’s

face, face to face.20 Their transformation demonstrates that faces are not just vehicles for

and affirmations of divine revelation, but also are bearers of revelation to others, forming

links in a chain of spiritual transformation.

The dynamic encounters in the Rav Hamnuna Sava story exemplify the Zohar’s

model of facial dynamism as macrocosmic, effecting what anthropologist James

Fernandez calls a “return to the whole”– a perceived restoration and affirmation of

humanity’s place within the greater ordering of the universe.21 Integrating the self into the

cosmic whole through the revelatory processes the Zohar describes is central to the

production of kabbalists. These encounters also carry an ethical component. Worthiness,

presumably of an ethical and spiritual nature, conditions who is able to see God face to

face. Rabbi Abba and Rabbi Eleazar’s openness to a stranger, which allows their

manifestation of the divine face and all its associated repercussions, also carries an ethical

message of openness to the other and a willingness to learn from the stranger. Had the

companions been too proud to learn from a donkey driver, the chain of revelation would

have been broken.

Similarly, in the Sava de-Mishpatim section of the Zohar, Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi

Yosi access the divine face through their own encounter with each other (see Zohar

2:94b, above) before meeting another mysterious donkey driver (the Sava) who also

20 Since according to kabbalistic theology the sefirah Shekhinah is closer to

human experience than Tiferet (the sefirah associated with God as the Blessed Holy One– though sometimes “Blessed Holy One” includes a cluster of several masculine sefirot surrounding Tiferet), the narrative also implies that Rabbi Shimon sees Shekhinah’s face in this life but in the afterlife will engage with God at a higher level.

21 See James Fernandez, Persuasions and Performances: The Play of Tropes in Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 188-213.


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reveals divine secrets.22 His secrets culminate in another story of face to face encounter,

in which the Sava describes a kabbalist who meets a maiden that represents the Torah,

itself a kabbalistic symbol for Shekhinah.

Sefer ha-Zohar 2:99a-b

Torah knows that the wise of heart circles her gate every day. What does she do?

She reveals her face to him from within the palace and hints for him a hint, and

immediately returns to her place and conceals herself…As he comes near to her,

she begins to speak with him from behind a curtain that she has spread, words

suitable for him until he reflects little by little…Then she converses with him

from behind a fine veil, words of riddle…Then when he is accustomed to her,

she reveals herself to him face to face and tells him all her hidden secrets and all

her hidden ways that were concealed within her heart from ancient days. Then

he is a complete man, a husband of Torah and a master of the house, for she has

revealed all her secrets to him, removing and concealing nothing.

This passage offers teachings similar to those of the Rav Hamnuna Sava narrative.

Rabbi Hiyya and Rabbi Yosi reveal Shekhinah’s face in Zohar 2:94b, only to receive a

teaching during a meeting with a stranger in which Shekhinah’s face is again revealed–

this time through face to face encounter with a Torah-maiden who also represents

Shekhinah. Only the “wise of heart,” a title that indicates a kabbalist but also implies a

wisdom that is both textual and ethical, is worthy of this encounter. As in the Hamnuna

Sava story, the Sava de-Mishpatim sequence teaches that every face to face encounter

may be a vehicle for spiritual transformation– an idea with profound implications for how

an aspiring kabbalist should treat his fellow humans. In Zohar 2:95a Rabbi Yosi

complains that the old man “troubled” him with “formless words,” but Rabbi Hiyya

22For information and analysis regarding the Sava de-Mishpatim section of the

Zohar, see Pinhas Giller, Reading the Zohar: The Sacred Text of the Kabbalah (NY: Oxford University Press, 2001), 35-68; Oded Yisraeli, The Interpretation of Secrets and the Secret of Interpretation: Midrashic and Hermeneutic Strategies in Sabba de-Mishpatim of the Zohar (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2005) [Hebrew].


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reminds his companion, “Sometimes in those empty ones you can find bells of gold.”23

The Sava’s initial appearance as an annoyance reminds the reader that all encounters may

lead to revelation, discouraging a rush to judgment and calling upon the kabbalist to seek

wisdom in unlikely places.

This ethical guidance ascribes sanctity to the everyday, as meetings and partings

that may seem insignificant take on cosmic implications. One rabbi meets another, two

rabbis meet a third, some companions encounter a stranger and so on– the Zohar’s stories

of facial revelation describe the movements of daily life. Yet the Zohar invests these

interactions with additional meaning as the face of God manifests through them to

emerge among human beings, transforming human faces and the encounters between

them into sanctified space that may blossom into relation with the divine.

Interpreting the Dynamic Human

The following passages indicate which parts of the human body the Zohar

understood as interpretable and also offer some clues to the purposes underlying such

interpretation.


“This is the book of the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1). In the mysteries of

human features are those generations revealed. Of the mysterious human

features: in hair, in forehead, in eyes, in face, in lips, and in lines of hands, and

in ears. By these seven are humans revealed.

Sefer ha-Zohar, Raza de-Razin 2:70b24

In the manner that the Blessed Holy One made stars and constellations in the

expanse of the firmament for reflecting upon them and those heavenly signs, and

to gain knowledge from them, so did the Blessed Holy One make in human

beings marks and lines in that human countenance– like those stars and

23 Both statements are from Zohar 2:95a. See Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition,

5:3n8 for the origin and implications of “bells of gold.” 24 I draw the reader’s attention to the fact that these two quotations share a page of

Zohar in separated columns.


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constellations– to gain knowledge and to develop great wisdom from them and

to guide the body with them. Just as the appearance of stars and constellations

changes in the expanse of the firmament according to the deeds of the world, so

does the appearance of marks and lines change in the expanse of the human

being according to his deeds from moment to moment. And these words were

transmitted only to those truly worthy, to know and to gain great wisdom.

Zoharic physiognomy reflects the dynamic macrocosm. The human body, like the

celestial bodies, is part of a greater pattern that reveals divine knowledge to those who

know how to seek it. This knowledge, like the stars and the body itself, is ever changing.

The skin is a firmament, and the record of human deeds dances across it. Yet the changes

those deeds inspire are also inspirations to action; they “guide the body,” ethically

integrating it into the sanctified world.25 Dynamic body reflects dynamic cosmos, and

looking outward and inward become equivalents. As in the Zohar’s facial revelation

teachings, here physiognomic knowledge also is conditioned ethically, available only “to

those truly worthy.” And as with esoteric Torah learning, Zoharic physiognomy is an

interpretive art that reads a body understood as text. Genesis 5:1, “This is the book of the

generations of Adam,” provides scriptural introduction to the Zohar’s physiognomic

sections, which claim that the face offers insight into personal character traits, capacity to

succeed at Torah study, intelligence, religious behavior, worldly success, relations with

others, mental health, and the ability to reveal divine secrets.

Zoharic physiognomy’s most important ritual function is selecting and training

kabbalists. This aspect of facial interpretation is evident in both the Zohar’s true

physiognomic sections, by which I mean the sections that describe physical traits and

their associations, and in its narratives involving facial interpretation, by which I mean

stories in which one man evaluates another during a face to face encounter and takes

action that relies on his reading of the other’s face. Raza de-Razin 2:72b, in a brief

narrative introduction to a true physiognomic section, describes Moses choosing advisors

25 Because of the kabbalists’ interactive theology in which human actions

reciprocally affect divinity, I take their idea of guiding the body by its constellations as a call for ethical, rather than self-serving, action.


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according to the physiognomic knowledge that the text then presents.26 Indeed, in Raza

de-Razin 2:70a Shekhinah herself teaches Moses the physiognomic arts. Yehuda Liebes

has argued convincingly that the Zohar implies Rabbi Shimon too should choose

disciples according to physiognomic potential, drawing connections to physiognomy’s

similar role in late ancient traditions.27

If, as Liebes has suggested elsewhere, the Zoharic companions represent the

work’s kabbalistic authors, then Rabbi Shimon’s use of physiognomy in this capacity has

important implications for understanding how the kabbalists identified, selected, and

trained one another.28 Indeed, some physiognomic teachings seem to be reserved for

qualified kabbalists alone– like the “secrets of hair for the masters of qualities who know

the ways and the secrets of Torah, to recognize the hiddenness of human beings who are

‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:27)” in Zohar 2:71b or the “mystery of the face for

those masters of inner wisdom” in Zohar 2:73b. Thus, Zoharic physiognomy hints at a

kabbalistic ritual practice of facial interpretation that was essential both to the production

of kabbalists and to the maintenance of master-student relationships. Hints as to how this

ritual was conducted are scattered throughout the work. For example, Zohar 2:73b gives a

teaching on interpreting eyes that seems to reference the transitional zone between iris

and pupil– a feature that requires close gazing indeed.29

Sefer ha-Zohar 1:190a

When Rabbi Hiyya came from there [Babylonia] to the land of Israel, he read

Torah until his face shone like the sun. And when all those who studied Torah

26 Interestingly, in Zohar 2:78a Rabbi Shimon explains that Moses did not need

physiognomic knowledge, but rather chose advisors through the Holy Spirit. 27 I.e. the Pythagorean and Neoplatonic traditions. See Liebes, “Physiognomy in

Kabbalah,” 28-30. 28 See Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 85-138 for the idea that the Zohar’s authors

wrote themselves into the Zohar as the kabbalistic companions. See also a passage in the palmistry section of the Zohar (Zohar 2:77a) that sounds suspiciously like a peripatetic kabbalist referring to himself. It describes a man who travels seeking mysteries of Torah, whose words are worthy and whose prayers are effective, who has financial ups and downs, and who can arouse upper worlds in his favor.

29 See Daniel Matt, trans and ed., The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. 4 (Stanford: Stanford University Press for Zohar Education Project, Inc., 2007), 4:398n97.


15

stood before him, he would say, This one engages in Torah for its own sake, and

this one does not engage [in Torah] for its own sake. He would pray for the one

who engaged for its own sake that he would always do so and merit the world

that is coming. And he would pray for the one who did not engage in it for its

own sake that he would come to engage in it for its own sake and merit eternal

life. One day he saw a student who was studying Torah and whose face grew

pale. He said, Surely this one is thinking of sin! He stood with him together and

drew him with words of Torah until his spirit settled within him. From that day

on, his spirit affirmed that he would not pursue those evil thoughts and would

engage in Torah for its own sake.

In this passage, Rabbi Hiyya, whose own spiritual merit is indicated by his shining

face and who twice elsewhere in the Zohar is shown manifesting the divine face, uses

facial interpretation to identify who among his students is devoted enough to Torah to be

worthy of eternal life.30 Although the text simply says that his students “stood before

him,” the story’s passage from Hiyya’s shining face to his student’s pale and troubled one

indicates a facial focus for the rabbi’s assessment, just as the phrase “stood before him”

indicates face to face interaction. Rabbi Hiyya offers prayer for both the worthy and the

unworthy, but his interventions with his students are also more concrete. After observing

a student that his physiognomic skills tell him struggles with sinful thoughts, Hiyya takes

instructive action. He stands together with the young man, presumably face to face, until

his own settled wisdom settles in turn the younger man’s distracted spirit. The student’s

transformation is permanent– “from that day on his spirit affirmed that he …would

engage in Torah for its own sake.” Face to face interaction with Rabbi Hiyya transforms

him into a person of merit, in an example of a master-student relationship that

incorporates therapeutic physiognomic ritual. The Zohar hints at similar ritual gazing in

the following passage.


30 Rabbi Hiyya manifests Shekhinah’s face in Zohar 2:94b and 2:163b.


16

Come and see: One who reflects on what he learned from his teacher and sees

him in that wisdom is able to be increased greatly by that spirit…Thus Joseph,

in all that he did, would observe in the spirit of wisdom the image of his father.

He would contemplate it, and so the matter prospered, and he was increased by

another spirit of more exalted light.

The passage describes a contemplative practice performed by the biblical Joseph, a

character known for his abilities to interpret dreams and to transform failure into success.

The Zohar claims that to advance his cause, Joseph would gaze internally at the image of

his father, the patriarch Jacob. This gaze brought him an additional heavenly spirit that

allowed his endeavors to prosper. Significantly, the term for “image” (deyoqna) in this

passage is closely related to the word for “features” (deyoqnin) in other Zoharic

physiognomic passages.31 The word choice implies that Joseph did not contemplate

Jacob’s image in general, but rather that Joseph contemplated his father’s facial features.

Thus the passage claims that through envisioning a holy man’s features, Joseph gained

interior spiritual light. While the biblical Joseph narrative attributes Joseph’s success to

God, the Zohar also attributes it to a contemplative process of internal gazing upon a

patriarch’s face. Zohar 1:222a additionally describes Joseph gazing at his father’s image

to resist sexual advances from Potiphar’s wife– a lesson that shares ethical themes with

the Rabbi Hiyya story in Zohar 1:190a.32

The Rabbi Hiyya narrative also reveals a tension inherent in the Zohar’s

physiognomic teachings. The text’s beginning implies that physiognomy is destiny as

Hiyya sorts his students into those worthy or unworthy of eternal life. Yet his

interventions imply the potential to transition between these categories– a potential

actualized in the story’s conclusion. The text refrains from saying whether the student

who receives Rabbi Hiyya’s help emerges from the worthy or the unworthy group. Yet

by the end of the tale, the student is firmly in the “worthy” category, his presence there

confirmed by his resolutions to avoid evil thoughts and to study Torah for its own sake.

31 See Zohar 2:70b and 2:73b for examples. 32 See Bereshit Rabbah 98:20 for a related rabbinic teaching in which seeing his

parents’ faces cools Joseph’s blood. The rabbis suggest that either Joseph’s father’s or his mother’s face will work for the process.


17

Together, he and Hiyya prove the face dynamic, capable of reflecting both sinful

inclinations and ethical transformations.

This tension between physiognomy as destiny and physiognomy as dynamic and

therapeutic extends throughout the Zohar’s teachings on facial interpretation. Some

features do qualify or disqualify their bearers from kabbalistic pursuits, eliciting claims

such as, “He is a master of mysteries– of those supernal mysteries,” (Zohar 2:70b) or the

dismissive, “He is no master of secrets at all” (Zohar 2:71b).33 Yet over and over again,

the Zohar gives precedence to a dynamic physiognomy that plays a role in affecting and

confirming positive spiritual transformation, often conceived as repentance. Raza de-

Razin 2:71a-b, 72b, and 73b stress the shifting quality of physiognomic markings that are

inscribed by holy or impure spirits in accordance with human actions, noting the positive

outcomes possible “when he [the former sinner] returns to his Lord” (Raza de-Razin

2:71b). In a section that offers the four-faced angels of Ezekiel 1 as a guide to spiritual

characteristics, Zohar 2:74b teaches, “If that man does not go so far on the way of evil

and turns from that way and returns to his Lord…upon this one a good spirit remains to

dwell upon him, to overpower the previous rottenness that was in him, and projecting to

the observation of the eyes at that moment as the figure of a mighty lion. At the time that

he sees him, that vision causes a lion to pass before his heart.” In this case, repentance

evokes the figure of a lion hiding within the features of the man.34

Such teachings raise the question of what precisely the kabbalists thought they

were observing when gazing at each other’s faces. Unlike other medieval physiognomic

works, the Zohar claims that the kabbalists see in human features not just personality

traits, but also the spirit those features conceal– a spirit that in turn affects them.35


Mystery of the face for those masters of inner wisdom: For facial features are

not in outward signs but rather in the signs of inner mysteries. For the face’s

33 See also Zohar 2:73a and 2:75b. 34 The Zohar quotation at the paper’s beginning is also from this section, which

describes the man whose inner face is that of a human being as an ideal physiognomic type.

35 I will have more to say about these other physiognomic works below.


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features are changed by the mark of the features of the concealed face of the

spirit that dwells within. And from within that spirit are seen outwardly the

facial features that are revealed to the wise.


When a person walks on the way of truth, those who know the mystery of their

Lord look at him, because that spirit that is within is confirmed in him, and

projects outside a figure of all. And that figure is the figure of a human, and thus

it is a figure more complete than all [other] figures.36 And this is the figure that

passes briefly before the eyes of the wise of heart. This one, when they look at

his outer face –a face that stands before eyes of the heart– they love it…This

image of a human includes all images, and all are included within it. This one is

not anxious in his spirit. At the hour of his anger he is calm, and his words are

calm, and immediately he is appeased.

According to these passages, it is the interior concealed features that craft the outer

revealed features, mirroring the tension between divinity as concealed and revealed in

kabbalistic theology. The ability to perceive these concealed features depends on spiritual

mastery. In this understanding, a face is more than its features and the lines etched upon it

by time and personality. It is a window to the spirit within, which projects itself onto the

outward features and shapes them, but also produces brief flashes of truth that reveal the

soul’s composition. This revelatory moment, which can only be perceived by the wise of

heart and the masters of inner wisdom –by which, of course, the kabbalists mean

themselves– inspires love.

Glimpsing the concealed image within the revealed face implies a further connection

between microcosm and macrocosm, as the limited face grants entry into the greater

spiritual universe beyond it. As Liebes explains, reading faces becomes an exercise in

recognizing the divine image within each person– study and sanctification of the body

36 The human figure in the passage refers to the prophet Ezekiel’s vision in

Ezekiel 1, which includes four-faced angelic beings with human, lion, ox and eagle faces. For the Zoharic authors, the human face is the most complete and ideal of them all. See Zohar 2:73b-74a.


19

become a means for revealing the divine in whose image the body is formed.37 In Zohar

2:74a the search for inwardness is described as finding the human within the human. This

nested spiritual quality of the human face again recalls the journey toward the Torah-

maiden in Sava de-Mishpatim, where meaning expands outward at the inward journey’s

culmination.

Physiognomy, Raza, and Secretum

Zoharic tensions between accepting and rejecting physiognomy as destiny reflect

tensions in the physiognomic discipline itself. Joseph Ziegler writes, “Physiognomy

belongs to a group of practices (including medicine) that revolve around the semiotics of

the body.”38 Yet, as Patrizia Magli insightfully explains, participating in physiognomy’s

semiotic system involves taking that which is dynamic– the face and its features– and

freezing it into a system of symbolic correspondences.39 It is just this tension that is

prevalent in kabbalistic theology. The sefirotic system is always potentially at risk of

being read as a fixed system of signs, and great care is taken in many kabbalistic writings

to emphasize the sefirot’s inherent dynamism.40 Zoharic physiognomy, like the

kabbalistic theology in which it is included, must remain aware of these tensions and

work to acknowledge and overcome them. Otherwise, it risks undermining the very

system it seeks to uphold. It is from the need to emphasize cosmic dynamism that the

Zohar’s concern with ethical physiognomy emerges.

37 See Liebes, “Physiognomy in Kabbalah,” 37; Liebes, “Physiognomy in

Kabbalah,” 32. 38 Joseph Ziegler, “Philosophers and Physician on the Scientific Validity of Latin

Physiognomy, 1200-1500,” Early Science and Medicine 12:3 (2007): 285. And as Elliot Wolfson notes, “anthropomorphic images, when viewed under the lens of the kabbalistic symbolism, indicate that the semiotic nature of the body is what is real.” Wolfson, “Mirror of Nature,” 317. See also Wolfson, “The Body in the Text.”

39 Magli, 90. 40 For some thoughts on reading the Zohar’s images as dynamic metaphors versus

charts for reading the Torah sefirotically, see Ellen Haskell, “Metaphor, Transformation and Transcendence: Toward an Understanding of Kabbalistic Imagery in Sefer hazohar.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History 28:3 (2008): 335-362.

At this point in a future version of the study, I intend to offer examples of texts that emphasize this dynamism.


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Zoharic physiognomy is different from other Western European physiognomic

traditions– or at least from the ways in which those traditions were deployed. Sourced in

ancient writings and known in Europe from the twelfth century, by the second half of the

thirteenth century physiognomy was integrated into medieval science and natural

philosophy.41 By the fourteenth century it was known to lay audiences and being taught

in European universities.42 It was linked to several important disciplines including

zoology, medicine, anatomy, and cultural discourse regarding different human groups.43

Among Christian religious thinkers, physiognomy was tied to discussions of Christ and

his embodiment, with Christ’s perfect physiognomic type used to exalt him and to

distance him from his Jewish origins.44 Christian physiognomists speculated on physical

appearance’s relationship to sin, associating particular appearances with particular sins

and claiming that certain bodily signs distinguished persistently sinful individuals –

especially Jews– from Christians whose sins were removed through baptism.45 Indeed,

physiognomy was a potent Christian tool for vilifying Jews and establishing them as

other and inferior to Christians.46

While Christian physiognomy did not necessarily insist that physiognomy was

destiny, it did understand that the body influenced the soul toward certain behaviors, and

that changes in physiognomic destiny were dependent on great exercise of the intellect

41 Irven Resnick, Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High

Middle Ages (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 12-17.

42 Resnick, 17-18, 33-34. 43 Resnick, 18. 44 See Resnick, 31-33. 45 Resnick, 29-33. 46 See Resnick, 33-52. This legacy continued in Western culture and extends even

to today. A student recently drew my attention to a 2017 essay in the online publication The Pulp Zine called “The Old Hag and the Belle Juive.” The essay discusses how witches in European folk tales –and particularly in versions of those tales from the Walt Disney Animation studios– are depicted with features much like those ascribed to Jews in European physiognomy. The author focuses especially on the 2010 film Tangled (a retelling of the Rapunzel story), noting that a Jewish-looking witch kidnapping a blond European-looking child also raises the specter of the blood libel. Unfortunately, the website does not appear to list the piece’s author. www.thepulpzine.com/the-old-hag-and-the-belle-juive/


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and the rational will, rather on than scriptural study and repentance, as in the Zohar.47 To

the extent that Christian physiognomists were concerned with sin and its remedies, they

generally related overcoming sin to Christ and to Christian sacraments, rather than to

human repentance.48 Indeed, since physiognomic knowledge was shared among Jews and

Christians, it is possible to read the Zohar’s emphasis on successful human repentance

overcoming and transforming sinful faces as a response to Christian understandings of

Jews’ sinful physiognomic characteristics. Certainly, medieval Jews were aware that

Christians associated them with negative bodily traits. The early fourteenth-century work

Nizzahon Vetus (The Old Book of Polemic) includes a fascinating passage claiming that

although most Christians are “fair-skinned and handsome,” while most Jews are “dark

and ugly,” Christian beauty stems from menstrual impurity while Jewish ugliness stems

from spiritual maturity.49 The physiognomic section of the Jewish text Sod ha-Sodot (The

Secret of Secrets) disparages the “clear white complexion” it associates with “the people

of Ashkenaz” as indicating “shamelessness, cunning, lust, and unfaithfulness.”50 As

David Shyovitz notes, “In medieval Europe explorations of the workings of embodiment

and the natural world were inseparable from interreligious polemic.”51

Allusions to Zoharic physiognomy often prompt references to the Secretum

secretorum (The Secret of Secrets), a pseudo-Aristotelian text known to Muslims, Jews,

and Christians that was one of the most popular pieces of medieval literature and possibly

the most important source of physiognomic knowledge in the medieval world.52

47 Resnick, 17-18. 48 See Resnick, 29-33. 49 For the passage itself, see David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the

High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Nizzahon Vetus with an Introduction, translation, and commentary by David Berger, Judaica Texts and Translations Number Four, (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 224. For analyses of this fascinating passage, see Resnick, 291-93; Ivan Marcus, “A Jewish-Christian Symbiosis: The Culture of Early Ashkenaz,” in Cultures of the Jews: A New History (New York: Schocken Books, 2002), 500.

50 Moses Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, Magic, Medieval Romance, Hebrew Apocrypha and Samaritan Arachaeology, vol. 2 (NY: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1971), 799. I will say more about this text below.

51 Shyovitz, 4. 52 See Steven J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets: The Scholarly Career of a

Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2003), 5. For references to the Sceretum in relation to the Zohar’s


22

Presumably, it is this text from which the Zohar’s physiognomic section Raza de-Razin

(Secret of Secrets) derives its name. This fascinating work, in which “Aristotle” delivers

advice to his pupil Alexander the Great, circulated in thirteenth-century Western Europe

in versions translated from Arabic sources and by the fourteenth century was well known

to both scholarly and lay readers.53 The Secretum was translated into a great many

languages, including Hebrew and Castilian; its first partial translation into Latin was

produced in Spain, along with many other texts received from the Islamic world.54 While

eventually both Long and Short forms of the Secretum were known in Europe, the

version known in Hebrew and Castilian to those living in Spain during the last quarter of

the thirteenth-century –the same time period as the Zohar’s composition and initial

dissemination– most resembled the Short Form.55 The Secretum, which covers topics

physiognomic sections, see Matt, The Zohar: Prtizker Edition, 4:393n76; Nathan Wolski and Joel Hecker, translators and commentators, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, vol. 12 (Stanford: Stanford University Press for Zohar Education Project, Inc., 2017), 12:317-318n1; M. Gaster, “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum Secretorum,’ a Mediæval Treatise Ascribed to Aristotle. Introduction,” The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (October 1908), 1069. A Hebrew version called Sod ha-Sodot and its translation were published by Moses Gaster, and an English translation by Robert Steele is also available. For the English translation of Sod ha-Sodot, see Gaster, Studies and Texts, 2: 762-813. For Steele’s English translation of the Secretum, see Robert Steele, ed. Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, fasc. 5, 176-266.

53 See Williams, 5, 32, 60. Matt locates the beginning of the text’s Western European dissemination in the twelfth century. Williams places it in the thirteenth century. Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 4:393n76; Williams, 7.

54 Williams, 5, 32, 60. 55 See Williams, 61; Gaster, “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum,” 1071. Note

that there is scholarly disagreement on dating the Hebrew version of the Secretum, with Gaster placing it in the thirteenth century and Williams and Shyovitz placing it in the fourteenth. Amitai Spitzer says it is typical of thirteenth and fourteenth Hebrew translations from Arabic. See Gaster, “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum,” 1071; Williams, 61; Shyovitz, 60; Amitai I. Spitzer, “The Hebrew Translations of the Sod ha-Sodot and Its Place in the Transmission of the Sirr al-asrar,” in Pseudo-Aristotle, The Secret of Secrets: Sources and Influences (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1982), 35. As Shyovitz notes, a fourteenth century Hebrew translation does not preclude Jews knowing the text from oral sources or reading the text in widespread Latin and vernacular translations. Shyovitz, 60-61.

For an overview of the Zohar’s composition and scholarship regarding it, see Arthur Green, A Guide to the Zohar (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 162-168. Most of the Zohar seems to have been composed between 1280 and 1286, although some sections may have been written earlier. The Zoharic authors continued writing and


23

ranging from physiognomy to statecraft to medicine to astrology and beyond, presented

itself as a “Mirror for Princes”– a guide for choosing advisors and creating good

government.56 David Shyovitz notes that the Hasidei Ashkenaz, German esotericists

whose teachings influenced the Spanish kabbalists, “seem to have had direct access to the

Secretum secretorum, and to have incorporated some of its contents into their own

theological tracts.”57

However, when comparing the Secretum and the Zohar’s physiognomic sections, it is

difficult to find many resemblances beyond the shared topic. The Secretum’s character as

a “Mirror for Princes” is somewhat akin to the Zohar’s description of Moses using

physiognomy to choose advisors. Some forms of the Secretum suggest that physiognomic

knowledge can be used to guide the body, offering a short story in which Hippocrates,

confronted with an unflattering physiognomic assessment, explains, “I restrained myself

from following them [his inherent negative traits], and my reason overcame my

passions.”58 Although the tale indicates that physiognomy need not always be destiny, it

does not share the theme of repentance with which the Zohar associates that concept, and

revising various textual sections throughout the early 1290’s. Dating the Zohar’s different parts with precision is a topic of scholarly debate. See Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, with a foreword by Robert Alter (Jerusalem: Schocken Publishing House, Ltd., 1941; reprint, New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1995), 163-8, 188; Isaiah Tishby and Fischel Lachower, eds., The Wisdom of the Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, trans. David Goldstein, vol. 1 (Washington D.C.: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1989), 91-96; Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 11-12, 85-6. For theories regarding the Zohar’s group authorship, see Liebes, Studies in the Zohar, 85-138; Ronit Meroz, “And I Was Not There?: The Complaints of Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai According to an Unknown Zoharic Story,” Tarbitz 71 (2002): 163-93; Boaz Huss, Like the Radiance of the Sky: Chapters in the Reception History of the Zohar and the Construction of Its Symbolic Value (Jerusalem: Mosad Bialik, 2008), 43-4; Elliot Wolfson, “The Anonymous Chapters of the Elderly Master of Secrets– New Evidence for the Early Activity of the Zoharic Circle,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 19 (2009): 144-5, 173-5; Daniel Abrams, “The Invention of the Zohar as a Book: On the Assumptions and Expectations of the Kabbalists and Modern Scholars,” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 19 (2009): 89, 111-13, 139.

56 Gaster, “The Hebrew Version of the ‘Secretum,’” 1069; Matt, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 4:393n76.

57 Shyovitz, 59. For Hasidei Ashkenaz influence on the kabbalists, see Shyovitz, 212.

58 Robert Steele, ed. Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi, fasc. 5, 219.


24

the story also is absent from Sod ha-Sodot, the Hebrew version of the Secretum published

by Moses Gaster.59

The Sod suggests astrology can guide human action, declaring, “I tell you that a

foreknowledge of the future gained by this science is very profitable. For although a man

cannot save himself from what has been ordained, still he can take greater care of himself,

and eschew some of the evils that may befall him.”60 This sentiment is similar to Raza

de-Razin 2:70b’s assertion that both astrological and physiognomic knowledge can guide

the body, but the Sod does not connect the constellations to bodily markings in the

manner of Raza de-Razin. Rather, as in Christian physiognomic writings, the actions of

the stars merely influence the body and its circumstances in various ways.61 Of the

Zohar’s claim that facial features are shaped by “the features of the concealed face of the

spirit that dwells within” (Zohar 2:73b), which projects momentarily “to the observation

of the eyes” (Raza de-Razin 2:71b), Secretum and Sod know nothing.

On the other hand, the Zohar does share much in common with earlier Jewish

physiognomic traditions. Texts as ancient as the Qumranic “Aramaic Horoscope”

indicate the existence of “a common physiognomic (or possibly physiognomic-

astrological) tradition.”62 Gershom Scholem, Yehuda Liebes, James Davila, Joel Hecker,

and David Shyovitz discuss the important role physiognomic literature played in the

Hekhalot tradition– a tradition known among medieval Jews.63 Davila has shown that

Hekhalot esotericists used physiognomic characteristics to identify both potential

59 I understand that there are problems with Gaster’s edition, which is not a

critical edition, and intend further study in this area. See Shamma Boyarin, “The Contexts of the Hebrew Secret of Secrets,” in Trajectoires européennes du Secretum secretorum du Pseudo-Aristote (XIIIe-XVIe siècle) (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015), 451-452. See also Spitzer, “The Hebrew Translations of the Sod ha-Sodot,” 34-54. Spitzer says that Gaster’s English translation of the Sod is an accomplishment superior to his Hebrew versions. Spitzer, 41.

60 Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, 2:779. The translation is Gaster’s. 61 See Resnick, 22-23, 31. 62 Søren Holst and Jesper Høgenhaven, “Physiognomy and Eschatology: Some

more fragments of 4Q561,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 57 (2006): 42. 63 James R. Davila, Descenders to the Chariot: The People Behind the Hekhalot

Literature (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 2001), 65-66; Liebes, “Physiognomy in Kabbalah,” 39; Wolski and Hecker, The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, 12:318n2; Shyovitz, 95; Gershom Scholem, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy,” in Sefer Assaf (Festschrift for Simha Assaf), ed. M D. Cassuto et al. (Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1953), 459-495.


25

practitioners and those with special Torah abilities. 64 In eleventh century Iraq, Hai Gaon

and his father Sherira knew of physiognomic specifications for Hekhalot practitioners,

while in Spain both Yehuda Halevi in the twelfth century and Nahmanides in the

thirteenth century associated physiognomy with Hekhlalot literature’s Rabbi Ishmael.65

Existing Geniza fragments allude to physiognomy, and at least one of these advocates its

use for identifying promising Torah scholars. Both the work Hakarat Panim le-Rabbi

Ishmael (The Physiognomy of Rabbi Ishmael) and the Gaonic authors associate

physiognomic knowledge with Genesis 5:1, “This is the book of the generations of

Adam”– the same quotation in which the Zohar grounds its physiognomic teachings.66

The Zoharic physiognomic material’s resemblance to this internal Jewish tradition is

as great or greater than its resemblance to the Secretum. As with other trends in Jewish

thought, such as Neoplatonism, the Zoharic kabbalists borrowed ideas they found

worthwhile from sources both internal and external to Judaism and developed them

according to their own interests.67 One of the Zohar’s greatest modifications of

physiognomic material is its emphasis on facial dynamism as relates both to the body that

mirrors the shifting stars of heaven, and to the face’s transformative response to spiritual

therapy and repentance– an idea much expanded in later Lurianic Kabbalah. This concept

of a face responsive to repentance, learning, and spiritual transformation makes

physiognomy an important component of the Zohar’s ethical discourse. Although it

certainly does not refrain from dismissing “bad” characters or sinners based on their

appearance, the Zohar places greater emphasis on the idea that physiognomy is not

destiny than does related medieval literature, and this emphasis is tied both to the theme

64 Davila, 52, 67. 65 Nahmanides was also aware of the Gaonic responsum that referred to

physiognomic practice. See Davila, 61. 66 Davila 60-62, 61n18. See Scholem, “Physiognomy and Chiromancy,” 469-74,

480-87. See also Zohar 2:70a-b and Raza de-Razin 2:70a. 67 For discussions of Kabbalah’s relationship to philosophy see Moshe Idel,

Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 46-9; Boaz Huss, “Mysticism versus Philosophy in Kabbalistic Literature,” Micrologus 9 (2001): 125, 130-3; Mark Sendor, “The Emergence of Provençal Kabbalah: Rabbi Isaac the Blind’s “Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah,” vol. 1 (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994), 28-35.


26

of repentance’s power and to the idea of the macrocosmic face that can reveal divinity. In

much the same way that the face becomes both vehicle for and affirmation of spiritual

transformation in facial revelation texts, the face becomes both vehicle for and

affirmation of ethical transformation in physiognomic discourse, as the kabbalists

interpret faces to identify temptation, encourage repentance, and overcome sin. By

foregrounding physiognomy’s reflection of ethical dynamism, the Zohar brings facial

interpretation into productive coherence with its broader theology and with its teachings

on faces as sites of revelation.

Physiognomy and its Discontents

The Zohar’s model of a dynamic face responsive to moral transformation does not

overcome the tensions inherent in physiognomy as a discipline. First, reading the

dynamic face as static features –a tendency of all physiognomic discourse– undermines

the face’s role as a macrocosmic model of a universe and a God responsive to human

action– and especially to ethical action. Second, judging others based on their appearance

is ethically questionable. Employing physiognomy as a tool for moral assessment invites

the physiognomist to sort humanity into “good faces” and “bad faces”– a historic use of

the discipline unfortunately well known in Western culture.68 At their best, the Zoharic

kabbalists’ teachings on facial interpretation and revelation construct the face as a

macrocosmic model that becomes a tool for self-sanctification. Yet when, as

anthropologist Roy Rappaport writes, “the actors themselves become terms in their own

logic of the concrete,” they may also embody the weaknesses of the model they have

built.69

As Rappaport explains, “It may be that those whose actions are guided by any

cognized model assume, if they think about the matter at all, that it is composed of

descriptive, evaluative, and metaphysical statements concerning orders existing

independently of those statements. If, however, cognized models can predicate those who

are guided by them, they are not simply complex statements. They are in effect, although

68 Because kabbalistic theology insists on a dynamic, responsive universe, such

human judgment can expand potentially into divine judgment and cosmic threat. 69 Roy A. Rappaport, Ecology, Meaning, and Religion (Berkeley, CA: North

Atlantic Books, 1979, 136.


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not by conscious intention, performative in character.”70 To take a model for thinking as a

metaphysical truth is to apply that model to daily life and perform accordingly. When the

model relies on the body itself, potential for problematic deployment is especially high.

Rappaport writes, “The conceptual cleavages dividing or fragmenting the world are not

only made substantial but, being established in the flesh, become…apparently

natural….As such they become inescapable, unchallengeable, and ever-present, and so,

of course, do the dangers and antagonisms they entail… To say that it [an internalized

model for thought] is ‘easy to think’ is not to say that it is ‘good to think,’ and its cost

may be high.”71

The Zoharic authorship, ever sensitive to nuance, is conscious both of this

problem with physiognomic discourse and of the potential weakness that physiognomy

inserts into understanding faces as sites of divine revelation. Dividing the world into

worthy and unworthy faces, especially when that division is rooted in physical

appearance, inserts an ethical pitfall into a system otherwise intent on elevating human

facial encounter to an activity from which the divine face may emerge. The text addresses

this problem not in its physiognomic sections, but rather in narratives that involve facial

interpretation– narratives that are themselves extensions of the Zohar’s physiognomic

discourse.

Zohar 1:190a’s story of Rabbi Hiyya assessing his students’ potential for eternal

life based on their appearance –that is, sorting his students into “good faces” and “bad

faces”– problematizes reading character from the face as an incomplete use of

physiognomic knowledge. Rather than just identifying worthy and unworthy scholars,

Hiyya intervenes ethically on his students’ behalf through personal prayer and dynamic

facial encounter. Hiyya’s rescue of his student from sin demonstrates that it takes a moral

actor concerned with ethical transformation to effect ethical transformation in others– in

much the same way that other Zoharic narratives present seeing the divine face as a

means of transforming the kabbalist’s own face into a place where God’s face may be

70 Rappoport, 137-138. 71 Rappaport, 137. Rappaport is critiquing the gender binary as a model for

thought.


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seen.72 Zohar 1:190a attempts to promote an ethically conditioned physiognomy by

demonstrating that sorting faces by character is not the end point of facial interpretation.

Rather, the knowledge gained through this discipline should be a call to moral action and

a guide for remedying sinful temptation. The following narrative problematizes

physiognomy still further.

Sefer ha-Zohar 3:75b-76a

Rabbi Abba was going to Cappadocia and Rabbi Yosi was with him. As they

were going, they saw a man coming who had a mark on his face. Rabbi Abba

said, Let us leave this road, for this one’s face testifies that he has transgressed a

sexual sin of the Torah, and his face is marked because of it. Rabbi Yose said to

him, If he has had this mark since childhood, what sexual sin can be found in

him? He said to him, I see in his face that he has transgressed a sexual sin of the

Torah. Rabbi Abba called to him, Tell me something– that mark on your face–

what is it?

He said to them, Please do not punish me more than what my sins have caused!

Rabbi Abba said, How is that? He said, One day I was traveling on the road– I

and my sister. We stayed once at an inn and I got drunk on wine, and all that

night I joined with my sister. In the morning I got up and the innkeeper was

fighting with a man. I got between them and they attacked me– one from this

side and one from that side– and this mark went into my brain. And I was saved

because of a physician with us.

He said to him, Who was the physician? He said to him, He was Rabbi Simlai.

He said, What cure did he give you? He said to him, A cure of the soul. And

from that day I have done repentance. And every day I look at my face in a

72 Elsewhere, Hiyya’s attempts at ethical intervention are less unambiguously

ethical. For an excellent discussion of a story that bears interesting similarities to Zohar 3:75b-76a (which I am about to present), see Joel Hecker, “The Face of Shame: The Site and Sight of Rebuke (Tazri’a 45b-47a),” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts 23 (2010): 29-67.


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mirror and I weep before the Blessed Holy One who is the Master of the Worlds

for that sin, and with those tears I wash my face.

Rabbi Abba said, If it did not cause your repentance to diminish, I would

remove that mark from your face. But I call out over you, “Your iniquity is

removed and your sin purged (Isaiah 6:7)!” He [the marked man] said to him,

Say it three times! He said it to him three times and the mark disappeared.

Rabbi Abba said, Surely your Lord wished to remove it from you, for you were

certainly doing repentance. He said to him, I vow that from this day forth that I

will engage in Torah day and night!

He said to him, What is your name? He said, Eleazar (God has helped). He said,

the name worked, for God has truly assisted you and helped you. Rabbi Abba

sent him away and blessed him.

Another time, Rabbi Abba was going to visit Rabbi Shimon. He came to his [the

formerly marked man’s] town and found him sitting and expounding…“My

failing rises against me, it testifies in my face,” (Job 16:8)...Come and see:

When one transgresses a decree of Torah, Torah ascends and descends and

makes marks upon that person’s face so that all those above and below observe

him and they all pour curses on his head…We have learned: For this righteous

and worthy one who engages in Torah day and night, the Blessed Holy One

draws upon him a thread of love, and it marks his face, and from that mark do

those above and below fear him. Similarly, for one that transgresses a decree of

Torah a defiled spirit is drawn upon him and marks him on his face, and those

above and below are frightened of it73… And in him the Blessed Holy One has

no portion, and He forsakes him to destroy him for the world that is coming.

73 Raza de-Razin 2:71a offers a similar teaching, explaining that when the Holy

Spirit dwells with a person its tracings appear externally, but when that spirit withdraws and an impure one arrives, it also makes marks that appear on a the skin.


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Rabbi Abba said to him, You have spoken well. From what do you know this?

He said to him, I learned it. And I learned that this evil inheritance is transmitted

to all his children if they do not return [to God], for behold there is nothing that

can stand before repentance. And so I have learned, and this cure was given to

me one time when I had a mark on my face. And one day I was going on the

way when I met a worthy one, and that mark was removed from me by his hand.

He [Rabbi Abba] said to him, What is your name? He said to him, Eleazar– and

I call myself God has helped an Other (Eleazar the Other). He said to him,

Blessed is the Compassionate One, that I have seen you and merited to see you

thusly! Worthy is your portion in this world and in the world that is coming. I

am he who met you!74

Much like the story of Rabbi Hiyya and his student, this narrative displays the

therapeutic powers of both physiognomy and repentance, as the facial healing of a former

sinner results in a new Torah scholar. Rabbi Abba, a man called “Face of God” by Rabbi

Shimon, refuses to be deterred by an alarming face or by normal propriety regarding

shaming strangers and stops his journey to intervene on a sinner’s behalf.75 After Abba’s

ethical intervention, which hinges on a physiognomic miracle, Eleazar the repentant

sinner turns Torah scholar. Abba is fortunate enough to hear and approve of Eleazar’s

teachings during a happy reunion. The story even implies that Eleazar becomes a

kabbalistic initiate, since his teachings are decidedly esoteric and Rabbi Abba –already

described as “a worthy one”– judges him “worthy…in this world and in the world that is

coming.” The dramatic face to face encounter between the two men at the story’s end

affirms Eleazar’s new status. Yet the story teases its reader with ambiguities; things are

also amiss between Rabbi Abba and Eleazar. Questions, omissions, and misrecognitions

74 Lawrence Fine notes that this narrative is the closest the Zohar comes to Isaac

Luria’s later spiritually therapeutic physiognomy. See Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 402n18. See also Fine, 153-4.

75 Rabbi Shimon calls Rabbi Abba “Face of God” in Zohar 1:7a and 1:9a. To understand why rebuking the stranger can be understood as ethical and appropriate behavior, see Zohar 3:45b-47a and Hecker, “The Face of Shame.”


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undermine the story’s positive message. These narrative disjunctions allow the Zohar to

affirm facial interpretation’s importance in Kabbalah while at the same time

problematizing physiognomy’s potential conflict with kabbalistic ethical discourse by

critiquing the practice of sorting people into “good faces” and “bad faces.” In the

following analysis, I read the text to expose this internal critique.

At the narrative’s beginning, Rabbi Abba diverts from his path to accost a man with

a mark on his face about the man’s sexual transgressions. Rabbi Yosi’s question about

whether the man might have been born that way interrogates physiognomy’s legitimacy,

and also rebukes Abba for going out of his way to shame the stranger whose face he has

categorized as “bad.” Although the stranger confirms that his mark resulted from sexual

sin, Yosi’s question sensitizes the reader to physiognomy’s questionable character. If the

man is not a sinner, but merely has a birthmark, why is Abba justified in judging him?

And although he is a sinner, he also is the victim of Rabbi Abba’s accusations– a

victimization that clearly makes Rabbi Yosi uncomfortable.76

The story continues to question physiognomy’s effectiveness when it reveals the

marked man as an already repentant sinner who has practiced a spiritual healing ritual

received from another rabbi. What then is Rabbi Abba diagnosing, and why can’t he

diagnose repentance as easily he can see sin? Even when Abba miraculously removes the

mark, the man himself –and not the physiognomist– remains the primary agent of his

own moral transformation, since it is he who washes his face with his own tears, and it is

he who prompts his healer to declare Isaiah 6:7 three times.77 Rabbi Abba remains

skeptical of the marked man until the mark disappears. Having categorized Eleazar’s face

as “bad,” he is reluctant to see him otherwise. Though assured of his own ability to heal

the stranger, he assumes Eleazar’s repentance is motivated not by ethical remorse, but

rather by his disfigurement. Abba worries that if the mark is gone the repentance will

disappear as well.

When Rabbi Abba next encounters Eleazar, the formerly marked man is fulfilling his

vow to become a Torah scholar with a self-referential discourse regarding sin,

76 Rabbi Yosi’s concerns may reflect those of the reader as well. 77 Revealing his name as Eleazar (God has Helped) highlights the fact that it is

God who also effects the healing in response to Eleazar’s sincere repentance and ethical transformation.


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repentance, and marks on faces. The discourse presumes an audience, though the

audience’s presence goes unstated. Strangely, the teaching contradicts Eleazar’s own

story. Eleazar explains that God marks human beings in response to both holiness and

sinfulness, but when Torah marks a man as sinful his condemnation is cosmic, with those

above and below “pouring curses on his head.” He declares that God “forsakes” the

sinner with the marked face “to destroy him for the world that is coming.” According to

his own teaching, Eleazar should inhabit this category. Yet the reader knows he does not,

having learned the lesson from Eleazar’s own story that repentance transforms the spirit,

and this transformation is affirmed in the face. Rabbi Abba ought to share the reader’s

concern, having witnessed Eleazar’s healing and heard his tale, yet he tells the man that

he has spoken well, as though no contradiction is present.

It is only after Rabbi Abba draws him into what appears to be a more private

conversation that Eleazar mentions repentance and its power to avert divine disfavor that

extends even to the sinner’s children. Eleazar’s response to Abba leaves ambiguous

whether Eleazar believes repentance is possible only for the next generation or if it is an

option available to the sinner himself. He speaks of receiving a “cure” and divine help,

but his teachings and experience remain strangely bifurcated– he is Eleazar but calls

himself Eleazar the Other, explaining that God has helped an Other. This is strong self-

condemnation, as the Zohar’s identification of Otherness with evil is well known.78

Indeed, the most famous character called Other in Jewish literature, Elisha ben Abuyah,

is an unredeemable sinner.79

In Eleazar’s mind, the sinner with the marked face and the unmarked Torah scholar

cannot be the same person. Eleazar tells Rabbi Abba, “there is nothing that can stand

before repentance,” but his teachings and statements call into question whether he

believes this claim, though has already benefited from its truth. His “bad face” and his

“good face” are unreconciled and he experiences them as unreconcileable. The story’s

ending further emphasizes this disjunction when Rabbi Abba and Eleazar fail to

78 See Ellen Haskell, Mystical Resistance: Uncovering the Zohar’s Conversations

with Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 4, 45-58. 79 For Elisha ben Abuyah in the Zohar, see Zohar 1:204a-b.


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recognize one another. Their miraculous first encounter results in their meeting again as

strangers. What should have revealed each to the other instead has concealed them both.

I suggest that the problem from which these tensions arise is Abba and Eleazar’s

mutual internalization of the “good face” versus “bad face” physiognomic model. Both

characters freeze the dynamic face in a way that defies its ability to express

transformation. Abba’s failure to recognize Eleazar the Torah scholar implies that in their

previous encounter the rabbi saw the mark, but not the man. His punishment for this

misrecognition is the inability to recognize and be recognized by the man he rejected.

Eleazar in turn accepts Abba’s categorization. Once having had a “bad face,” he can only

have a “good face” by thinking of himself as another person entirely. The uncertainty

with which he discusses repentance’s power and the poignant way he describes those

above and below heaping curses on people with marked faces reflects Rabbis Abba’s

attitude toward him at the story’s beginning. Internalizing the “good face” versus “bad

face” dichotomy diminishes both men. Neither sees what the Zohar wants its reader to

know– that the face is dynamic and responsive to spiritual transformation, especially

when repentance is involved. The narrative’s many misrecognitions and

misunderstandings caution the reader about the consequences of removing facial

dynamism from the physiognomic system, which results in removing the system’s ethical

underpinnings as well. This acknowledgment of facial interpretation’s potential to do

harm when deployed as a static system for judgment serves as an ethical intervention of

its own. Like Rappaport, the Zohar warns its readers that what is “easy to think” is not

necessarily what is “‘good to think,’ and its cost may be high.”80

Author’s Ending Note

This project is still very much a work in progress. Thank you for giving me the

opportunity to workshop and discuss it with you.

80 Rappaport, 137.

Documents

Countenancing God: Facial Revelation and Ritual in Sefer ... IU Workshop Paper.pdfHaskell Working Paper 2 revealed the Zohar’s accounts of mystical experience. Hartley Lachter’s