Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Seeing God in a Selfie Age

Last week’s parashah, as we have seen, is replete with the word Shema – “Hear”. As discussed, Shema, beyond the auditory sense of hearing, means engaged mindfulness and understanding. This week’s parashah begins and ends with a call to “See”- Re’eih!

Several years ago, I had occasion to appreciate the centrality of seeing in the many Eastern Orthodox Churches of the Balkans. The iconography within these churches is a feast for the eyes. Synagogues, as a rule, (including those in the Balkans which I had visited) do not employ iconography.

Indeed the first Hebrew, Avraham, is celebrated as an iconoclast, repudiating visual representations of God. We are said to be a hearing-centered people (Shema Yisra’el), particularly in our relationship with God, rather than vision-oriented. In fact, the second of the Ten Utterances warns: “Do not make for yourself any visual likeness (of God)”.

Yet, in our Yigdal prayer, we proclaim “there has never arose… another prophet like Moshe, who looked upon the Divine likeness”. Further, this prayer echoes the Biblical statement of God: “Mouth to mouth, I spoke to him (Moshe)…through vision and he beheld the Divine likeness”.

Seeing God, or a likeness thereof, is not alien to our Jewish tradition and, at times, is seemingly reserved for the select few, representing the most profound encounter with God one can experience. Like hearing, however, the significance of seeing, within Judaism, lies beyond the sensory.

In his first encounter with God, “Moshe hid his face, for he feared to look upon God”. Revelatory moments of God are peak experiences that comes to us, any of us, at different stages and degrees.

The handmaiden at the splitting of the Reed Sea, the Rabbis state, saw more than the prophet Ezekiel, renowned for his reported vision of God.

In our world of “seeing is believing”, wherein “selfies” serve to mark our presence, God, our students contend, is non-existent. By extension, the Bible, throughout which God seems to be seen, is of no import, as well, for in our time God can nowhere be seen.

Yet, it is the very ‘selfie’, though not the physical/sensory one, in which our biblical ancestors saw, and we can, see God. We are all living “images of God”, who are in need of discovering/ recovering the divine within ourselves. We see God in our being seen. Significantly, our parashah, Re’eih-See!, ends with being seen by the presence of God, which, at the same time, is our being present in our unique divine image.

Our parashah reminds us: “One cannot appear before the divine face/presence empty”. Only in truly seeing our ‘selfie’ do we come to see God. As Re’eih concludes, each sees God through “one’s own gift, in accordance with the blessing that your God has bestowed upon you”.