By Rabbi Dario Feiguin
B´nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica
The Secret in the Eyes
A few years ago, a movie from Argentina called “The Secret in Their Eyes” won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in that famous award ceremony in Hollywood.
For me, the secret in the eyes in the eyes is not so secret. It can be hidden, but it is impossible not to notice it. I may not know the details. I may not know the reasons. But I can’t play the fool, even though I may want to, and try to live as if my soul had not noticed what it already felt: that the eyes hold a secret.
In the movie, as in life itself, it is impossible to camouflage a look of love. It burns and pierces. Its fire is overwhelming, irrational, conclusive. It is easy to notice a look of anger or of hate. It hurts more than an insult. And just like there are people with a great capacity for love, there are others with a great capacity for hate.
In life, thank G-d, we receive the most tender beautiful looks of love, and even if we don’t go looking for them, we also get some of the other kind.
There are shameful looks. Sometimes, they are a product of childish shyness. Other times, they are a product of a guilty sense of shame over evil deeds. In those cases, the secret in the eyes is revealed when they look away with cowardice or remorse.
What secret lies in the eyes that express pain, suffering, anguish or despair? What gaze can hide the heartbreak in a loss or the impotence towards a terminal disease?
Haitian eyes, Chilean eyes, Turkish eyes, Sudanese eyes, Iraqi eyes, Israeli or Costa Rican eyes, eyes from the pogrom, from war, from the Shoa. What more proof is needed than looking in those eyes? What else but feeling those feelings?
How wonderful the eyes that are unable to hide a surprise!
And how poor the proud eyes that cannot hide their arrogance!
How real the warm eyes of gratitude!
And how incredibly beautiful the glowing eyes of joy!
The movie is right: the eyes speak. And they speak, even when they would rather put on a poker face and express something different than what’s screaming out from inside them.
The eyes cannot hide the secret of a lie, or the sofistication of hypocrisy, or the comes and goings of manipulation. The retina of the soul is left with an artificial sweetener flavour. A flavour that can might only leave with the counterweight of love, by vomiting a catharsis of honesty, and other times it just never goes away.
When we open the book of Vayikra, the third book in the Torah, we see the text begins with the sacrifices and offering the people brought to the Kohen, the priest, to express different feelings of gratitude, guilt, regret, happiness, pain, etc.
I can imagine the Kohen taking in the looks of all those people whose eyes screamed silently all their secrets.
When we see a good movie or when we read a sacred text, we don’t see the players, we see ourselves. The question is whether we want to play into lies and manipulation. If it is good for us to feel that we are wasting creative life by trying to get rid of that nasty artificial sweetener taste.
The Kohanim spoke also of purity and impurity. Almost the entire book of Vayikra refers to that! Most people are never completely pure or impure. But the purification appears like a compass allowing us to be. It is like being clean, but from the inside.
May our eyes not hide what we are, human and imperfect, but G-d willing, may they be sensitive and true.
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