The word “kiss” (nesheq) is quite rare in the Torah – suggesting it has quite a specific and special meaning.
In the Torah, kissing is not a sexual act. Kissing is emotional and expressive, but it is primarily about connection, usually when people come together. Here are all the examples in the text:
| Then [Jacob’s] father Isaac said to him, “Come close and kiss me, my son”; | Genesis 27:26 |
| and [Jacob] went up and kissed [Isaac]. | Genesis 27:27 |
| Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and raised his voice and wept. | Genesis 29:11 |
| On hearing the news of his sister’s son Jacob, Laban ran to greet him; he embraced him and kissed him. | Genesis 29:13 |
| You [Jacob] did not even let me [Lavan] kiss my sons and daughters good-by! It was a foolish thing for you to do. | Genesis 31:28 |
| Early in the morning, Laban kissed his sons and daughters and bade them good-by; then Laban left on his journey homeward. | Genesis 32:1 |
| Esau ran to greet [Jacob]. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept. | Genesis 33:4 |
| You [Joseph] shall be in charge of my [Pharoah’s] court, and by your command shall all my people be kissed; only with respect to the throne shall I be superior to you.” | Genesis 41:40 |
| [Joseph] kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; only then were his brothers able to talk to him. | Genesis 45:15 |
| Now Israel’s eyes were dim with age; he could not see. So [Joseph] brought them close to him, and [Jacob/Israel] kissed them and embraced them. | Genesis 48:10 |
| Joseph flung himself upon his [deceased] father’s face and wept over him and kissed him. | Genesis 50:1 |
| G-d said to Aaron, “Go to meet Moses in the wilderness.” He went and met him at the mountain of God, and he [presumably Aaron] kissed him [Moshe]. | Exodus 4:27 |
| Moses went out to meet his father-in-law; [Moshe] bowed low and kissed [Yitro]; each asked after the other’s welfare, and they went into the tent. | Exodus 18:7 |
That is it! Note that almost every kiss is between men who are related to one another.
So what is the symbolic meaning and power of a kiss?
To start with, given that the soul is “blown in,” we can understand that a kiss is a connection of souls – a non-verbal contact between the soul of one person, and the soul of another. It is a method of bonding two people together.
The patterns identified above suggest that kissing is something that is only done by those who have a connection to G-d (G-d talks to Lavan as well), which might be understood if we consider that the mouth (and breath) are the gateway for our breath – the port through which our soul (which was breathed in through Adam’s nostrils) can enter the physical world. That is why our words have creative power, because the breath that we use to create words comes from our divinely-gifted soul.
Any two people can be close to each other, physically sharing space. But the kiss suggests another dimension of relationship: The only people in the entirety of the Torah who “kiss” are Yaakov, Lavan, Esav, Yosef, Aharon and Moshe. No other characters – not Noach or Avimelech or Malchi-tzedek or Pharoah or Yitro or anyone else – kisses anyone in the text. All of these other characters were powerful and substantial in their own right. But perhaps they lacked a certain connection to their own souls, a certain self-awareness about the spiritual potential that each person holds within themselves?
If so, then kissing suggests the ability to create a specific emotional and spiritual connection. Which, given the very short list of those who kiss in the Torah, might reflect the kind of relationship that Jews have with ourselves and our Creator, the origin of each human soul.
There is a substantial outlier in the above verses:
You [Joseph] shall be in charge of my [Pharoah’s] court, and by your command shall all my people be kissed; only with respect to the throne shall I be superior to you.”
It seems that Pharoah is aware that Joseph and his people, the Hebrew, or Ivri, are emotional and spiritual. By telling Joseph that his power is through his “kiss”, is Pharoah separating his physical authority (through his throne), from Joseph’s softer power? Is Pharoah somehow saying to Joseph: “You manage things your way, using your special “kissing” power – and I’ll remain the physical ruler of Egypt”?
Which would work in any case: Judaism (the 6-headed menorah on one stalk) represents the connection with spiritualism, while Pharoah (the 6 heads of corn on one stalk) is the embodiment of the physical world. Egypt had basically NO spiritualism. They were the quintessential pagans, the “only the physical matters” kinds of people, which is why Pharoah’s first response to Moshe’s demand to “let my people go” is “I do not know G-d.” Egyptians, like all pagans and adherents to “Scientism” today do not recognize a deity who has no physical, tangible existence.
I’ll also note that the word for kissing, nesheq, appears precisely 13 times in the Torah. Which matches the age at which Ishmael was circumcised (creating a divine connection). But that number also echoes the 13 Attributes of Mercy (also a special divine connection), and the 13 bulls offered on the festival of Sukkos, which is the holiday described the most as the holiday of “simcha” – of unification and connection.
This might also explain why the last “kiss” in the Torah is pretty early in the text, when Moshe kisses Yitro, his father-in-law. From that point on, the relationships in the text become less interpersonal, and more communal and national. So the references afterward are not to kissing, specifically, but instead to the other things that number 13: the national Attributes of Mercy (to remove punitive consequences from sin) and the national offerings on Sukkos.
Kisses, by the way, also foreshadow the Attributes of Mercy, because most of the kisses in the Torah reflect rapprochement, and even closure, putting the past behind them: think of Esau kissing Jacob, and Joseph kissing his brothers.
P.S. Lavan uses kisses to separate – in the same way that he wanted to have a simcha, a party, to commemorate his daughters leaving. For every other use of the word in the Torah, a kiss is to connect, but for Lavan, the kiss is more useful as the way to disengage from someone else.