Beauty Beyond The Beholder
Beauty as an opening to transcendence
Beauty so enthrals us that we are willing to overlook unpleasant particulars. Luigi Mangione's recent murder of Brian Thompson is a compelling case in point. The crime drew in people for several reasons, but perhaps most disturbing was the online excitement over Mangione's striking appearance. Shortly after his arrest, merchandise featuring his likeness became available online. Later, a Disney-themed dance party received backlash for projecting the murderer's image alongside romantic music.
These admittedly extreme examples underscore the "halo effect," a cognitive bias linking visual appeal to perceived virtue. Like so much in Western culture, our infatuation with beauty borrows from ancient Greek civilization. Greco-Roman philosophers, poets, and artists were all obsessed with the perfection of form, elevating aesthetics by imbuing it with ultimate significance.
And yet, beauty wields an almost spiritual quality that we would be remiss to ignore. Aesthetics transcend the functional or utilitarian, pointing to a more profound inner longing. Beauty defies easy definition or objective measurement, yet we innately recognize it when we see it. This elusive, ephemeral quality, a resistance to definition, makes appreciating the beautiful distinctly human. Actually, we shall find that beauty itself is an apt metaphor for man's role in this world.
To get to that point, let's pose a question: Mankind or angels, which has greater spiritual significance? Medieval commentators already discuss such a question. But Rav Chaim Velozhin writes that this conversation was never really a debate at all. Instead, the answer to our inquiry depends on one's vantage point. At first blush, angels might appear more spiritual. Owing to their soul-like composition, there is nothing we would identify as physical about them. They possess neither material existence nor selfish desires— while these undeniably human qualities point to our own comparative deficiencies.
Yet, despite appearing second best in this cosmic competition, humanity has a secret ace up its sleeve. Unlike angels, God has endowed man with free will and the ability to choose right from wrong. We are thus capable of infinite personal growth. A verse in Zecharia juxtaposes God's two paradigmatic creations:
"I will give you a path to walk among those standing here."
{Zechariah 3:7}
Here, God portrays the High Priest Yehoshua in motion, whereas the angels in his vision are stationary. Jewish mysticism sees this passage as an archetype for man's distinction from angels. Man is a 'mehalech', an entity with the power of personal movement and dynamism. Angels, meanwhile, are static, chained to a single spiritual level. Of all beings, man is uniquely positioned to meet the charge of imitatio Dei. He alone is capable of 'knowing God in all your ways'.
What exactly allows humanity to express such a compelling sense of Godliness? Paradoxically, it is our apparent separation from the spiritual realm. Man's unique potential draws from his ability to convey the spiritual from within a banal material world.
Let me explain with an analogy. A traveller has two ways of sharing his experience of a breathtaking landscape: taking a photograph or preserving it in a painting. With its precision and fidelity to reality, a digital picture conveys an accurate, unembellished reflection of the world. Yet, therein lies its limitation. While truthful in representation, photographs often feel like superficial veneers—mere shadows of what they want to imitate.
In contrast, a painting leverages the apparent constraints of paints, textures, and shading to elicit intense resonance. Van Gough's paintings are far from scientific representations of nature yet evoke undeniable grandeur and awe. They convey deeper truths than a photograph could ever hope for.
Humanity's role is to use course material instruments to somehow reveal Godliness. In this sense, Man himself is an artist, his lifetime a canvas. From within material limitations, we are tasked with expressing something entirely beyond our finite selves. As such, man's tasks and abilities share much with the concept of beauty. Beauty, like the human soul, resists reductionism. There is no way to dissect it under a microscope. You cannot explain a Beethoven symphony solely in terms of sound-wave physics. Likewise, mapping neural pathways cannot capture spiritual essence. In both cases, the whole vastly exceeds the sum of its parts.
As noted earlier, the Greeks, whose ancestor's name—Yefet—speaks of beauty, founded a civilization that elevated aesthetics to an art form. Their sculptures, architecture, and poetry still inspire us today. Yet, this same culture clashed violently with Judaism in the Chanukah narrative. This can't be because Jews reject beauty; how could we, when our own Torah describes Sarah, Rachel and Yosef as beautiful or Shlomo building a Temple of breathtaking splendour? It must be because we understand beauty differently.
The critical difference in our understanding comes when we look closely at the Torah's descriptions of aesthetics. Rachel and Yosef are described as 'yefat-toar viyefat-mareh' beautiful in form and appearance. Here, Rashi identifies two distinct dimensions of beauty. The first - toar - is what we might call classical beauty, the Greek ideal: proportion, symmetry. But the second - mareh - points to something that transcends physical form: an inner spiritual radiance. Rav Moshe Shapiro explains that regarding beauty, toar is the gateway to mareh. Externally pleasing features draw observers in before divulging profound inner quality. True beauty is not simply physical but a gateway to something beyond material expression.
Greek culture excelled at harmonizing external beauty, yet they decoupled it from spirituality. Their superficial beauty aimed to evoke inspiration solely through physical forms, projecting an illusion of depth. In contrast, the Torah's ideal is a sanctification of beauty that connects body, soul, earth, and heaven.
As we approach Channukah's zenith and peer into the flames of our menorah, let's try to reach for beauty that transcends our material surroundings in the hope that God will reach back in return.
Keep Pondering and Enjoy The Rest Of Chanukah!
Very interesting!
Beautiful piece. Always excited to see your work in my inbox!