Friends – The scene: an enormous, Gothic-style airport breezeway bustling with travellers and flooded with stark, pale mid-morning light. Our time-travelling Hero, having arrived from the distant future to prevent the immanent extinction of mankind by hunting-down the maniacally-plotting scientist whose petri-dish full of a rare, virulent bacteria sits moments away from being unleashed upon the world's unsuspecting billions, enters the breezeway with his case-working psychologist Heroine, who has finally begun to believe the complex web of seemingly anachronistic facts and speculations he has spun for her since the film's beginning. Our two unlikely protagonists, knowing that his search for the elusive scientist has reached a fruitless impasse, decide instead to buy tickets to the Florida Keys, obliviously resigning their world-saving quest to instead try and live a 'normal life' together with their remaining time. As she departs for the ticket counter, they exchange their very first shy, awkward kiss (for which the audience has waited an hour-and-a-half), finally confirming to us that she believes the entire twisted tale of his life's story, and that he can finally trust her with all of his secrets.
Throughout the history of cinematic storytelling and, more broadly, throughout the general narrative traditions of human civilzation, the emotional investment of the reader/viewer frequently hinges upon that precarious moment before which we're not sure whether the male and female protagonists will truly trust each other enough to express that trust in the world of physical intimacy. Why does this statutory "first kiss," a seemingly superficial and symbolic gesture, always concretize the sense of security and faith between two characters, or between two real human beings, for that matter? Why do we inevitably feel pent-up, stifled and insecure about our intimate relationships until that gleaming moment of mutual lip-mashing, after which our sense of identity and self-confidence somehow becomes magically, ecstatically refreshed? Does this "kiss" somehow grant us a new level of realization about our current relationships, or does it merely return us to a more pristine state of relationship with the world we've always known, wherein those sorts of realizations themselves become extraneous?
"Kissing," believe it or not, finds a place within Jewish legalistic terminology as the momentary physical "connection" between two pools of water, one of which has never been manipulated by human intervention (i.e. rain or spring-water, which is kosher for the ritual purification of vessels and people), and one that has come into existence as the result of having flowed-through a man-made pipeline (i.e. "tap" water, which is not kosher for ritual-purifying purposes). Once the water from these two pools have "kissed," however briefly, the latter pool becomes as kosher as the former for any sort of ritual purification. I asked - what's the real difference between these two pools? They're both fresh water, as the latter hasn't been any more stained with iodine or contaminated with fungus than the first - what makes one more "purifying" than the other? The answer: one's waters have come straight from the sky or from an earthen spring (i.e. direct, unadulterated providence from Above), while the other's came from the same providence, but were then manipulated and modified to gratify the vicissitudes of human compulsion. The momentary "kiss" between these two waters causes that "manipulation" and its associated, human-inflected "compulsion" to categorically vanish, and the second pool reassumes its pristine state as an unadulterated, Providential gift, pure itself and capable of purifying.
Perhaps this is what Jacob intended to do when he singlehandedly lifted the rock from atop the Aramean shepherds' enormous communal well of springwater and subsequently kissed his future bride in full view of the community. Perhaps, as the Kedushat Levi suggests, by opening the floodgates of the cynical, untrusting shepherds' communal livelihood, he was attempting to demonstrate how they could reassume a more pristine state of receptivity to Providential love, while simultaneously showing them that all it takes is a "kiss" to change an entire relationship from one of manipulation and compulsion to one of unadulterated, purifying benevolence. Perhaps Jacob, tears streaming down his face after such a purifying "kiss," was simply releasing these renewed, pristine waters from within himself, his inner "compulsions" and desires for sensuality reduced to their bare, pure essences as longings to become part of a greater Wholeness.
We should be blessed this and every Shabbes to look deeper into the initimate relationships we uphold with friends, family and loved ones, and to unearth anything that compels us to manipulate or control those relationships, allowing us to find beneath those compulsions an honest spark of holy, unifying connectivity with which to "kiss" and replenish them fully and totally
Jerry Silverman
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Jerry Silverman is a former student of Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He is working in new media, designing and managing media projects. He lives in Riverdale, NY with his wife Sarah and their two children. |