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We’ve been talking a lot about coverups lately, with the Epstein case and all. But perhaps the most deadly coverup of all has been the actual covering-up of faces determined to harm people while maintaining anonymity.
New York, Massachusetts and California are discussing mask bans for law enforcement officers in the face of the totalitarian-style abductions by masked ICE agents. In L.A. the county supervisors have been moving toward a ban this week.
See also: Safety measure? Or intimidation tactic? Masked ICE agents spark the debate (USA Today).
Something similar appeared in Ha’aretz, an Israeli newspaper. It seems that in the West Bank, people who are up to no good, whether Hamas operatives or extremist settlers, tend to cover up with masks.
Meanwhile, Columbia University has agreed to comply with the Trump administration’s demand for a mask ban, in an attempt to quell demonstrating by pro-Palestinian groups. 1
So, how about a mask ban on both college campus provocateurs and ICE bullies and we call it even? It’s time for everyone to take it off! For all those who bemoaned the mask mandates of the Covid era, how about a NO-mask mandate now, except where health conditions require it? Hey Mr. President, we can dedicate the ban to most fearsome mask wearer of all, the “late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
Criminals have covered up since long before facial recognition technology and omnipresent security cameras drove wrongdoers to wear them and public authorities to ban them. Some trace original mask bans to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Others to Guy Fawkes, who attempted to blow up the House of Lords in London on 5 November 1605. These days, European countries seem to be far ahead of us in banning masked protests.2
Jews have been masking mischievously on Purim for centuries, but never with criminal intent, just a little imbibing and theological presumptions about the hiddenness of God.3
According to Dr. Pnina Galpaz Feller, “Masks are a kind of veil that covers the face and hide one’s identity while at the same time highlighting one’s character.” While doing that, Purim masking also “makes us wonder if there is an "authentic self" at all, or whether it is all just endless masks upon masks.”
Not even AI can cover up a live face. The face (human - and animals too) has become virtually the only place around where we still find complete authenticity and honesty. The face of a child most of all.
After midnight on June 15, multiple masked antisemitic vandals, recorded on video, tossed a brick through the window of a kosher market in my home town of Brookline, Mass. I visit the Butcherie often and snapped this photo of a few days later.
For those of us who have frequented this and other stores on Harvard St., one of the most vibrant Jewish neighborhoods in this country, just down the street from the synagogue where I literally grew up, this was a gut punch. And when I went back this week, on July 31, fully six weeks after the attack, the window was still boarded up.
I asked why. Insurance, I was told. Or maybe someone wants the image of destruction to stand there as a reminder of the hate that infects our society.4 Whatever the reason, it evokes deep within me a feeling of violation. That boarded window has become my own personal Wailing Wall.
Parenthetically, today (Sunday) is Tisha B’Av, commemorating the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem, in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively. The ruins of the temple also remain in place as a reminder of the results of baseless hate, both toward Jews and among them. Because those ancient stones remain sheltered in place, this fast day is the only Jewish holiday that you can actually touch.5 Long before the Western Wall became a nationalistic touchstone, it was a place where literally by touching stone, people could channel the pain and yearning of hundreds of generations.
Below is a photo of my first time touching those ancient stones of the destroyed Temple, when I was 16. You can almost feel the tears.
Back to masks: This disease of hate, unlike the pandemic we recently endured, seems to spread via the covered face. The masked face conjures the illusion of anonymity, and as with those cowardly anonymous online trolls, the illusion of invulnerability as well.
And so that’s why I disagree with the ACLU, which is opposing anti-mask mandates. This for me is less a question of free speech than public safety. Even if we were to assume that all ICE agents were well-meaning, which certainly is not the case, the masks create opportunities for imposters to impersonate law enforcement agents and attack innocents, and that is precisely what is happening.
We need to get the masks off the streets.
There is nothing so honest and authentic as the human face. Even when covered, even when altered by cosmetic surgery, something of a person’s basic humanity glows through. When we think of human beings being created in God’s image, we are thinking first and foremost of the revealed face. Often in the Bible, when people seek God, or wish for God not to be hidden, the metaphor of the face is employed. Psalm 27 is case in point.
In the Hebrew, the tone of this plea approaches desperation - the word “face” is repeated three times in three lines. The psalmist thirsts to see God’s face, or at least to spend his life’s journey seeking it. “My face desires Your face,” the psalmist says. It’s the world’s first invitation to FaceTime.
But what does seeing the face of God really mean? In the finale of the Les Misérables, ”To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Here’s what Victor Hugo really said in the novel (Book 5, Chapter 4):
The glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams. God is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.
Love unmasks the divine face. And when the human face is unmasked - a face that incorporates God’s image, divine love is present - and hate dissipates. 6
True, you can shoot when you see the “whites of their eyes,” but that’s only because, if you are focusing only on the “whites,” you are missing the pupils, along with the rest of the face.
Rabbi Danielle Upbin writes about Psalm 27:
The insistence on the possibility of God's presence despite the internal experience of absence is emphasized in this stanza with reference to the face of God repeated three times within three lines. The face of a person is the entryway into their subjective life. It is through a smile, through subtle changes of expression, and above all, through the eyes that we discern a person's thoughts and feelings, which words sometimes only hint at, or mask. The entreaty to see God's face is a plea to enter this inward place, to find understanding, to come to know God fully and thereby find comfort. I do not only want the life of faith, of living only with my own thoughts of you; I want to know you, to relate to you, to feel that you are with me.
So, how about a mask ban on both left-wing provocateurs and ICE bullies and we call it even? For all those who bemoaned the mask mandates of the Covid era, how about a NO-mask mandate now, except where health conditions require it? Hey Mr. President, we can dedicate the ban to the “late, great Hannibal Lecter.”
Natasha Lyonne’s Poker Face is the most important TV series on right now, because it captures the zeitgeist and expresses our greatest fears and hopes. It seems like almost everything around us right now is a lie. Almost everything we read or hear is suspect, even though a UAB study indicated recently that most people are honest — except for a few. According to the report:
The distribution of lying is highly skewed: Most people report telling few or no lies on a given day; and most lies are told by only “a few prolific liars,” the study’s authors determined.
Still, we all wish we had someone like Lyonne’s character around to determine who’s lying and who’s not. AI has now made it impossible even to believe what we see with our own eyes.
But not even AI can cover up a live face. The face (human - and animals too) has become virtually the only place around where we still find complete authenticity and honesty.
The face of a child most of all. Especially a suffering child. We have to see that face.
But even a face calloused by a lifetime of lies cannot completely hide.
Which is why the masks must come off, now more than ever.
To see the face of God.
To see lots of Godlike faces from far-flung places, click here to see my photo album, Children of the World.
Check out my new Jewish Ethicist piece at MJL, “Is Cultural Appropriation OK?
NOTES
The custom of donning masks and costumes on Purim--a practice which is first reported in Provence in the early fourteenth century, and later achieved popularity under the influence of the German Fastnacht celebration and the Italian carnivals--was afterwards tied to the idea of God's "hiding his face" as found in Psalm 27. The name Esther comes from the word hidden- asteer - seen in that same Psalm and elsewhere in ancient sources and liturgy.
All I know is that in Israel after a terror attack damages a public location, like a bombing at a restaurant, the common practice has always been to fix up the place like new so when people come in the next day, the message is that life will go on and we will not be deterred by hate. I know the scope of the October 7 attacks have changed that formula in some locations, like Kibbutz Nir Oz, where almost all the homes were damaged or destroyed, and the destruction remains visible for all to see.
As the song goes, “Some people have hearts of stone; some stones have a human heart.” Long before the Kotel became a nationalistic touchstone, it was a place where literally by touching stone, people could channel the pain and yearning of hundreds of generations.
See Arthur Green’s excellent contemporary Jewish theology, Seek My Face, Speak My Name, pp. 29-35. He writes, “So the face is our gift to God. But the light that shines forth from that face and radiates with love - that surely is God’s gift to us.”
In 1998, I visited the wall and left a prayer for my father, who had recently had a serious stroke. I appreciate the Victor Hugo quote. He was a friend of my French family; Pere Hyaacinthe Loyson often mentioned him. His uncle Charles Loyson, whom he was named after, was friends with Hugo in his early years at the university. Hugo mentions him in Les Misérables. I agree with the mask ban. Normal police are not allowed to wear a mask and must display their identification on their uniforms. This should be the same for ICE agents. If someone came to my house or place of business carrying a rifle, wearing a mask with no identification, I would assume he was a criminal! If I owned a gun and he came to my house, I would defend my home!