Getting to Know Your 70 Forces - 035 Touch

דע את כוחותיך 035 מישוש

In the 70 forces of the soul that the Vilna Gaon discusses, five of them are our senses. We have discussed previously the senses of sight, hearing, smell and taste. Now we will discuss our sense of touch.

Touch is a vast subject. The Raavad says that there are three kinds of touch.

Simply speaking, touch is the most physical sense, and therefore it seems to be the lowest kind of sense. However, this is only due to the sin of Adam. Before Adam sinned, in the initial state of Creation, touch was actually the highest kind of sense.

There is a dispute among the Rishonim (classic commentators) if touch is a disgrace to mankind or not. The Rambam is of the opinion that touch is a disgrace to us, that it is shame borne upon us that we have to touch things in order to be able to connect to things. However, the Ramban is of the opinion that touch is not at all a disgrace to mankind, and that rather the opposite is true, because husband and wife are able to connect to each other through physical intimacy, which involves physical touch. Touch, which is mishush in Hebrew, comes from the word tashmish (marital intimacy).

Our sense of touch enables us to feel out something. We also find a spiritual sense of touch, such as how a person must feel out his deeds through self-introspection; this is called mishmush in Hebrew, which comes from the word mishush\touch.

When a person is trying to feel out something, he first touches it, and then he feels it a bit more. When he’s feeling it out, this defines what the purpose of the sense of touch is: it is to figure out what is here. When a person is feeling out something, he is trying to discover: “What is in this thing? What is it about?”

The Mesillas Yesharim says that we must examine and feel out our deeds; examining our deeds to see if we are doing anything wrong is called fishfush, while feeling out our deeds to see if we are lacking anything in them is called mishmush. What is the difference between these two kinds of self-introspection? First are trying to figure out if we are doing anything wrong; after doing that, we try to feel out our actions a little more so we can discover what lies behind them.

The first level of self-introspection, fishfush\examination, is a necessity that resulted from sin. Ever since the first sin, we have had to examine our deeds and see if we are committing any sins. But before the sin, there was no concept of fishfush; there was only mishmush – there was always this ability to feel out a matter and discover what lies in it.

Fishfush is about trying to discern between good and evil, to root out the evil from our deeds. It serves to separate between good and evil. Ever since the first sin, everything has become a mixture of good and evil, and we have to sift out the bad from the good. For this, we use the ability of fishfush – we examine our deeds and see if we are doing anything wrong that we need to cut out.

Mishmush, however, is a different kind of introspection. It is not about sifting out the bad from the good; it is about being able to feel the essence of a matter. It is to examine a certain concept and to be able to know what lies in it.

We mentioned before that in essence, touch is the highest kind of sense. It is only after the first sin that touch has been demoted to the lowest kind of sense, but before the sin, touch was the most elevated of all the senses. Why? It is because from all the senses, touch is the only sense that helps us truly recognize a matter. When we hear something or when we taste something, it’s only a partial way of understanding what something is. But when we touch a matter – when we feel it out and discern what it is – that is the true recognition of a matter, because it is getting to the essence of the matter. Our ability to feel out things recognizes a matter as it truly is.

After the sin, our sense of touch became the lowest sense, and it doesn’t work like it used to. Now, our sense of touch can only feel out the movements of something. We never really feel the essence of something – we are only feeling the movement of something.[1]

The Raavad lists three kinds of touch. One kind of touch is felt through our sense of taste, which is when we chew down with our teeth on food. The taste we get in our mouth gives us a feel on what it is. Another kind of touch is felt through our throat; as the food is going down our throat, we get a different kind of taste, and this gives us another kind of feel on what the food is.

Another kind of touch is felt through “ohr harosh”, “skin of the head”. This is referring to the eyes, which can feel things by seeing them. This is a negative kind of touch, as we will explain. Ohr, which means “skin”, has in it the letters ayin and reish, which are the root letters of the word “ervah”, someone whom it is forbidden to have relations with.  This hints us to that when we feel something by looking at it, it is not a proper way to feel out a matter.

When a person feels something by looking at it, and it’s something that is forbidden to look at, he feels tempted to go after it. This is the idea of ervah – someone whom it is forbidden to have relations with. Ervah is really anything that opposes you.

Whenever a person feels a challenge, it is a result of his evil imagination. This is why a person falls to the sin; he sees the forbidden sight, and then he feels that it challenges him – and then he falls prey to it. He feels challenged from ervah, and then he finds that he can’t overpower ervah.

We also know that if a man is worthy, he merits to have a wife who will help him, but if he isn’t worthy, his wife will oppose him. This is because if a man looks at his wife as someone who simply opposes him, then she will indeed oppose him, because she becomes like ervah to him.

This is the kind of touch which is degrading – when we use our eyes to try to feel out something. It is the lower sense of touch that resulted from the first sin. Whenever we use this kind of touch, we are not feeling the essence of a matter, and we are only feeling how it moves. When we feel the movement of a matter, we feel opposed by it, and it becomes like ervah to us.

The higher kind of touch, however, is the kind of touch that stems from our sense of taste, such as when we chew or swallow, as we mentioned before. This represents a kind of touch in which a person seeks to understand the matter more and more – he wants to really “taste” it. This is the purpose of our sense of touch – to want to find “taste” in a matter. When we taste a matter, we reveal the depth to the movements of a matter – and that reveals our true sense of touch, because then we truly feel the matter.

Most people do not look to find the “taste” of a matter. People only taste things when they enjoy the taste, but this isn’t really taste; why? Because the person is only tasting it so he can enjoy it. It’s about the enjoyment he gets out of it – not about the taste of the matter.  It can also be for a deeper motive, like if the person is tasting the matter solely so he can get to the essence of the matter.

We have said that there are two general kinds of touch: through our mouth, and through our throat.

When we chew on things, our teeth has to grind it up for us, which shows us that we are feeling how something opposes us. This shows us that our purpose of touch is to get past what opposes us.

Through marital intimacy, a man and woman, who are opposites, can be combined together. This shows us that the power of touch can be used to unify opposites.

By contrast, our throat represents a kind of touch in which we don’t unify the opposites, because the throat takes a food and narrows it down so it can be swallowed.

In our current level, we never really feel the essence of a matter, our whole perception of a matter is felt only through our imagination.