Face to Face

At first they were one. Say it, and then qualify it, because the first sentence cannot hold the care this story needs. One view in the midrash says the first human was created with two faces, and then made into two backs, a back here and a back there. The Talmud teaches two faces, and the same page records a dispute. And the Zohar, the foundational book of Kabbalah, says that even in that nearness the man was alone, because she was at his side and not facing him.

The secret is the turn. A deep sleep. A separation the Kabbalists describe, in the upper worlds, as an act of kindness, not of harshness. Then she is adorned like a bride and brought to stand face to face. Ramban reads the purpose as sight and as will. He will see her. He may be apart from her, or joined to her, as he chooses.

This closes a small arc. One episode was the voice inside. One was the light under the skin. This one is the person beside you. It is told so that someone who is single, divorced, or widowed can read it without being informed that they are half a person. The sources speak of man and woman. The practices at the end are for anyone who loves someone. A line that would call an unmarried person incomplete is left on the shelf.

One being, with two faces

Genesis 5:2 says they were created male and female, and blessed, and called by one name: Humankind. Adam. The name is shared before anyone argues about how the sharing was shaped.

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman, in Bereshit Rabbah, tells it this way. When the first man was created, he was created with two faces. Then he was sawed, and made into two backs, a back on this side and a back on that side. Someone objects: the verse says one of his ribs was taken. He answers: one of his two sides.

We do not use the English word that modern speech has loaded onto this image. The research flags it, and the article says “one being with two faces.” We also do not show a fused body. The films show two figures in garments of light, a little apart, faces unseen. The midrash’s “sawed” is a verb in a text. It is not a picture, and no hand is shown doing it.

The Talmud’s version of the two faces is Rabbi Yirmeya ben Elazar’s, from the verse “You have formed me behind and before.” That is one view. The same page of Berakhot records a dispute between two sages, one saying a face and one saying a tail, the rib as an appendage. The wording of that dispute was not re-copied when this research was checked, so it is not quoted here. It is enough to know the page argues. Because the page argues, this article will not say the Bible denied the rib, and it will not say the two faces are the only reading. One view. A reader who wants the argument erased will not get that from a library.

What we do quote, from the midrash, is a clause about the name, and only that clause. When both of them are together, they are called Adam. The sentence in the midrash that would say an unmarried person is not complete is not brought. It can hurt, and the hurt is not required by the clause we need. The shared name is a dignity in the story of the first pair. It is not a tax on every other life.

The Zohar has a line in the same key. Adam is not called that name except as male and female together. Soncino says the male is not even called man until he is united with the female. Read it inside the story these books are telling, the first pair and their one name. Do not carry it out of the garden as a judgment on someone who eats alone. The article will not. Tenderness toward the people reading is part of telling this story honestly.

Side by side, and still alone

The verse is short. It is not good for the human to be alone. I will make a fitting counterpart. The Hebrew is ezer kenegdo, a helper corresponding to him, opposite him. The Zohar asks how “alone” can still be true if she was already there.

She was at his side. They were like one from the back. The male did not attend to her, and she was not a support facing him. So the man was alone. What is kenegdo? Facing him, so that they can cleave face to face. He adorns her like a bride and brings her to stand before him, faces shining, face to face. And as long as she was attached at his side, the man was alone.

Nearness without a face is still alone. That is the Zohar’s conclusion, not a slogan we wrote to scold couples who look at their phones. It is a description of a state. Side by side can be a life. It is not yet the facing the word kenegdo is given here.

Another passage asks why they were not created face to face from the start. Adam and Eve were made side by side. When the lower union was made right and they were turned face to face, the upper union was complete. Man was still not whole, in this passage, and when Eve was perfected, he was perfected too. “Perfected” is the Zohar’s word for that moment in the story. It is not a sentence about your neighbor who has not married. The books are watching the first pair become able to see each other.

A word that can go either way

Kenegdo is a hinge. Rashi, citing Yevamot, reads it as a fork. If he is worthy, she is a help. If he is not worthy, she is opposite him, to fight him. The Talmud says the same in fewer words. If one is worthy, his wife helps him. If he is not worthy, she is against him.

Read the subject. The worthiness in the sentence is his. The burden is not placed on her as a nature. The question the line supports is “what would make me someone who can be helped?” and not “why is she against me?” A marriage that feels like opposition is not, in this reading, a riddle about her. It is a question addressed to him. That is a hard mercy, and it is the grammar of the text.

Ramban goes a different and beautiful way. The Holy One saw that it was good for the helper to stand facing him, so that he would see her, and be separated from her, or joined to her, at his will. Sight, then a real apartness, then a joining that is chosen. A preceding sentence in that comment speaks in the science of its century. It is skipped. The sentence we have is enough to let “choice” be a sourced word. Love, in this reading, is not fusion. Fusion cannot see. Choice can. You can be apart, and you can be joined, and the will is what makes the joining a human act rather than a trap.

The sleep, and a separation made of kindness

The verse says God cast a deep sleep upon the man, and took one of his sides, and fashioned it into a woman, and brought her to him. The translation checked for this article renders the word many people know as “rib” with the word “side,” which is also how Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman explained it. We do not give the sentence an echo, and we do not show a sleeper being handled. The words are the words.

The Zohar’s Idra reads that verse as a pattern above and below. When they were separated, a slumber was cast, and the female was separated from behind his side, and her adornments were prepared, as it is written: and the Lord God cast a deep sleep. The Zohar is speaking in the language of the upper worlds, and it hangs that language on this verse. Say that plainly. The pattern is above. The verse is the verse. We do not pretend the Idra was only describing a couple in a garden, and we do not pretend the garden scene is a diagram of the upper worlds drawn in flesh.

The Arizal, the great Kabbalist of Safed, in Etz Chaim, says what had held the two backs together, and what took them apart. Before, the backs of both were severities. Because they were severities, they were stuck, one wall between them. A slumber was cast. And that is the line: kindness came and separated them.

This corrects a story people like to tell. It is not severity that pries them apart. Severity is what had glued them, back to back, unable to turn. Kindness makes the space. The Kabbalists are talking about the upper pattern. The human lesson we are willing to draw, and to label as a lesson, is that a little distance, offered so that two people can see each other, can be a kindness. No source opened for this episode says the separation was painful. “Painful” was an impression, and it was marked as ours, not as theirs. It is not taught here.

Pri Etz Chaim says she still stands back to back and must be brought face to face, and that the separation, the nesira, comes through the slumber. Sha’ar HaPesukim says the separation is needed so that she can separate and return face to face, and that she then grows to full stature and no longer has to receive her light through his back. “She grew to her full stature, and no longer had to receive through him” is the episode’s line, and these are its sources, spoken by the Kabbalists about the upper worlds. Independence, in this picture, is not a rejection. It is what makes a real facing possible. You cannot face someone if you are still attached to their back.

Adorned, and brought

Bereshit Rabbah says understanding was given in her, more than in the man, and that she was adorned like a bride and then brought to him. The Talmud in Niddah teaches, in one view, that a woman was granted a greater understanding than a man. One view. The page is a dispute. The article will not pretend the other view does not exist, and it will not hide this one, because this one honors her. Understanding, bina, is given as a gift in her, and then she is adorned, and only then brought. Beauty and effort come before the meeting. The film’s brighter robe is a picture of that adorning. It is not a wedding gown, and it is not a veil over a face. They do not touch in the last image. Face to face, one step apart, is a bond that is still made of two people.

Berakhot says the Holy One was Adam’s best man, the attendant who brings the bride. From this the Torah teaches a way of behaving. A greater person should be willing to serve as best man for a lesser one, and should not feel badly about it. The films never show the bringing. No figure, no hand. The sentence stays a sentence, and it becomes a practice: help someone’s joy, even if the role feels small. Courtesy is part of the first wedding, in this teaching. Rank is not.

When they turn, something rests between them

Rabbi Akiva, and only Rabbi Akiva, from a difficult chapter. We quote his teaching and Rashi’s note, and not the next line. If a man and a woman merit, the Divine Presence rests between them. If they do not merit, a fire consumes them. Rashi explains the letters. The yod of ish, man, and the heh of ishah, woman, are two letters of the Name, set between them. If the merit fails, the Name is lifted away, and what remains of each word is esh, fire, and fire.

The passage sits in a hard part of the Talmud. The article does not import that setting. It takes Rabbi Akiva’s sentence as a picture of a home. What rests between two people who merit it is not their intensity. It is a Presence. What remains when that is gone is fire, ego, heat, the consuming kind. You do not have to master the letter-play to use the image. Remove the fire you can remove. Leave room for something other than the two of you between you.

Bereshit Rabbah says, in a passage about offspring, not a man without a woman, nor a woman without a man, nor both of them without the Divine Presence. The Sefaria English understands this of bringing a child into the world. It is not a slogan about social completeness. It says that life which comes from two people is not from the two alone.

Even the cherubs, in Bava Batra, are described in two ways. One says their faces were turned toward each other. One says their faces were turned toward the House. The Talmud assigns the difference to a moral season. When the people do the will of Heaven, the faces turn toward each other. Closeness, even in the holiest room the book describes, is told as facing. Not as standing near. Facing.

Ramban on the verse “and he shall cleave to his wife” says that among animals the males have no lasting attachment to the females, but a man cleaves to his wife and wants to be with her always. The bond the Bible is describing, in his comment, is attachment over time. It is about that bond. It is not a ranking of people who do not have it.

The lesson of the short is an application, and it should wear that label. Back to back, you lean on someone you never really see. Sometimes there is a need for space, so that each can find a stature. Then love becomes a choice: to turn, and to face. The middle sentence is our telling of the separation. It is not a sentence in Etz Chaim. The sources speak of kindness making a space, and of a joining at will, and of a man who was alone while she was only at his side. The telling is what we do with that in a kitchen, or on a walk, or in a life that does not look like the garden.

Tools for life

Next episode: the first brothers. The face in front of you, in that story, is a brother, and the light between the offerings does not fall evenly.