Touch (negah) is very important in the Torah – Eve wants to touch the fruit, Avimelech wants to touch Sarai, and G-d touches mankind, to cite just a few examples. In every case, there are significant repercussions: when we (or G-d) touch something, the results can be life-altering. Touch matters. But why? And how?
One of the earlier uses of this word is in Jacob’s dream as he is leaving Canaan. Jacob dreams of angels ascending and descending a ladder – a ladder that is in turn touching heaven. That contact seems to matter, suggesting that the touch of the top of the ladder to heaven creates a continuity, a pathway between the physical earth and the spiritual heavens. Touch is interdimensional, fusing two different and not necessarily compatible realms.
The first time “touch” is found in the text, Eve is talking with the snake: About the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said: ‘You shall not eat of it or touch it, lest you die.’”
Curiously, G-d had not commanded Adam regarding touch – just eating the fruit. And yet, Eve clearly wants to touch the fruit, and she has the idea that this desire was itself also forbidden. Touch, even at this early stage in human existence, was already an instinctive desire. Touch is also described later in the text as assault or theft (D. 17:8) – taking something that does not belong to you.
G-d’s touch is not so benign. When G-d afflicts Pharoah for taking Sarai, the Torah says that G-d “touched” his household, and it is understood as a plague (G. 12:17). The Torah makes it clear that there is a toxic relationship when G-d, who embodies the spiritual world, touches Egypt, which is firmly wedded to the physical plane. The next time G-d “touches” Egypt (E. 11:1) He brings the plague of the firstborn, leading to widespread death. A purely earthy society cannot survive contact with divinity, as there is no way to translate from one to the other.
Contrast this to when G-d touches the Jewish people. The angel who wrestled with Jacob “touched” his thigh, and Jacob limped forever more (G. 32:26). Even a forefather does not come away from a divine encounter without negative consequences. Still, at least Jacob was able to wrestle with G-d (this is what Israel means), and unlike with Egypt, nobody had to die.
Nevertheless, even with Jacob it is clear that the gap between G-d’s people and G-d is still large enough that a direct touch exposes our weaknesses, and leaves Jacob with a permanent impairment.
G-d touches His people at other times as well. The spiritual ailment of tzaraas (often mis-translated and mis-understood as “leprosy”) is visually described in the Torah as a “touch.” Direct contact with the divine exposes our failings, and imperfections – but in the case of tzaraas, it also gives us an opportunity to address our flaws.
We might visualize ourselves as always being on Jacob’s ladder – we may climb or descend, but never too quickly. Moses could touch Sinai during the Revelation, but the people would not survive it. Similarly, a normal person was forbidden from touching something too holy for them; such a leap above one’s own level was incompatible with continued existence. Ascending toward G-d has no shortcuts.
Touching something below our level would be like descending on the ladder. If we touch something that cannot elevate (like a lizard or a dead body or other reminder of base earthiness or animalism (including our own bodily emissions)), then we “catch” that level, and are lowered as a result of the contagious contact.
The Torah describes at length the process through which we can once again ascend: it typically involves immersion, being sprinkled by the ashes of the red heifer, or offering a sacrifice – plus waiting for a set period. Time creates a temporal distance or gap between the negative event and the renewed future. Like the ladder itself, fusing physical earth and spiritual heaven, the process of reconnecting upward requires both physical and temporal investment.
But the positive possibilities of touch also are specified in the text. When, during the Passover, the people indicate a desire to align with G-d, they reach down to touch grass to blood (vegetable and animal), and elevate it by touching it to their doorpost (E. 12:22). The action, reaching upward with the products of the earth in our hands, is an emulation of Jacob’s ladder – connecting earth to heaven!
Any animal that touches the altar is sanctified in the very act of physical contact – again, like Jacob’s ladder (which is especially poignant when we consider that the altar was placed on the same place as Jacob’s dream of that ladder). Touching is contagious – both upward toward holiness and downward towards the earth and death.
In all, the word for “touch” in the Torah describes a transformative event. Eve touches the fruit, and everything is changed. A man touching another man’s wife is an irrevocable act. Any who touched the possessions of Dathan and Aviram would be tainted with their sins and suffer the same fate (N. 16:26). When the angel touches Jacob, he is marked by the act, creating not only a limp, but also a change in Jacob’s name and identity. The mere fact of that contact is transformative!
P.S. We could compare Jacob’s Ladder to the Tower of Babel, wherein the biggest tower man could make never got close to heaven. I suggest that this is because they were building something physical to try to reach something that is spiritual, which was a fundamental misunderstanding about where G-d can be found (G-d’s “residence” in heaven does not translate into a purely-physical understanding). Spiritually, heaven is – almost – within reach. You cannot get from here to there with just a physical structure.