תנו רבנן שלשה שותפין יש באדם הקב"ה ואביו ואמו אביו מזריע הלובן שממנו עצמות וגידים וצפרנים ומוח שבראשו ולובן שבעין אמו מזרעת אודם שממנו עור ובשר ושערות ושחור שבעין והקב"ה נותן בו רוח ונשמה וקלסתר פנים וראיית העין ושמיעת האוזן ודבור פה והלוך רגלים ובינה והשכל
וכיון שהגיע זמנו להפטר מן העולם הקב"ה נוטל חלקו וחלק אביו ואמו מניח לפניהם אמר
§ The Sages taught: There are three partners in a person: The Holy Blessed One, their father, and their mother. Their father emits the white seed, from which come bones, sinews, nails, brain that is in its head, and the white of the eye. Their mother emits the red seed, from which come skin, the flesh, the hair, and the black of the eye. And the Holy Blessed One places in them spirit, soul, countenance [ukelaster], eyesight, hearing of the ear, the capability of speech of the mouth, the capability of walking with the legs, understanding, and wisdom. And when a person’s time to depart from the world arrives, the Holy One, Blessed be He, retrieves His part, and He leaves the part of the person’s father and mother before them.
(ז) וַתֹּ֗אמֶר מִ֤י מִלֵּל֙ לְאַבְרָהָ֔ם הֵינִ֥יקָה בָנִ֖ים שָׂרָ֑ה כִּֽי־יָלַ֥דְתִּי בֵ֖ן לִזְקֻנָֽיו׃
“Who would have said to Abraham
That Sarah would suckle children!
Yet I have borne a son in his old age.”
(בראשית כא, ז) ותאמר מי מלל לאברהם הניקה בנים שרה כמה בנים הניקה שרה אמר רבי לוי אותו היום שגמל אברהם את יצחק בנו עשה סעודה גדולה היו כל אומות העולם מרננים ואומרים ראיתם זקן וזקנה שהביאו אסופי מן השוק ואומרים בנינו הוא ולא עוד אלא שעושין משתה גדול להעמיד דבריהם מה עשה אברהם אבינו הלך וזימן כל גדולי הדור ושרה אמנו זימנה את נשותיהם וכל אחת ואחת הביאה בנה עמה ומניקתה לא הביאה ונעשה נס בשרה אמנו ונפתחו דדיה כשני מעיינות והניקה את כולן
ועדיין היו מרננים ואומרים אם שרה הבת תשעים שנה תלד אברהם בן מאה שנה יוליד מיד נהפך קלסתר פנים של יצחק ונדמה לאברהם פתחו כולם ואמרו (בראשית כה, יט) אברהם הוליד את יצחק
In reference to Sarah having given birth to Isaac, the verse states: “And she said: Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah should nurse children?” (Genesis 21:7). The Gemara asks: How many children did Sarah nurse? Why does the verse use the plural form when she had only one child? Rabbi Levi says: That day when Abraham weaned his son Isaac, he prepared a great celebratory feast. All of the nations of the world were gossiping and saying to each other: See this old man and old woman who brought a foundling from the market and are saying: He is our son, and moreover they are making a great feast to bolster their claim. What did Abraham, our forefather, do? He went and invited all of the great men of that generation, and Sarah, our foremother, invited their wives. Each and every one of the wives brought her child with her but did not bring her wet nurse. And a miracle occurred to Sarah, our foremother, and her breasts were opened like two springs, and she nursed all of these children.
But those people were gossiping and saying to each other: Even if Sarah, at ninety years of age, can give birth, can Abraham, at one hundred years of age, father a child? Immediately, the countenance of Isaac’s face transformed and appeared exactly like that of Abraham. Everyone exclaimed and said: “Abraham fathered Isaac” (Genesis 25:19).
R. Naftali Tzi Horovitz of Rophshitz
Zera Kodesh - Shavuot - In Your Face
We also need to understand what's written in Torah, that "face to face" or "multiple faces, God spoke with us from within the fire on the mountain."
But it's also written in Torah that "you didn't see, on the day that Adonai spoke to us within the fire, except for a voice." (So one verse says that God spoke to us face to face, but another verse says we saw nothing but a voice.)
Our ancestors, of blessed memory, wrote sweetly that we should hold God in front of us at all times. They wrote books of wisdom in which the holy and unpronounceable name YHVH is hinted-at by the (silent) letter aleph.
The aleph is written in the form of a vav with two yuds attached. (Picture a slantwise ו / vav, with one י/ yud above it and another below: that's what a printed א / aleph looks like.)
In gematria, Jewish word-math, we see that this deconstructed aleph adds up to 26 (vav = 6, each yud = 10) and the holy name YHVH also adds up to 26 (10 + 5 + 6+ 5).
But where this is really hinted-at is in the face of a person: one's two eyes are the two yuds, and the nose is like a letter vav, and in this way the face takes on the form of the letter aleph. This is what it means when it says (in Genesis/Bereshit) that we're created in God's image. The letter aleph is hidden in plain sight on the human face, and since the aleph represents the holy Name, that means each person's face has the holy Name on/in it.
This is the seal of God that is inscribed on the human face, and this is why we are instructed to see the likeness of the Holy Blessed One in one another. And this is why "I keep God before me always" is a fundamental principle in Torah. We are called to see God in each other human being, because God is within us.
Martin Buber: Distance and Relation (1950)
In this way we reach the insight that the principle of human life is not simple but twofold being built up in a twofold movement that is as such one movement, as the presupposition of the other. I propose to call the first movement "the primal setting as a distance" and the second "entering into relation.". That the first movement is the presupposition of the other is plain from the fact that one can enter into relation only with a being that has been set at a distance or more precisely has become an independent opposite.
Man wishes to be confirmed in his being by man, and wishes to have a presence in the being of the other. The human person needs confirmation because man as man needs it. An animal does not need to be confirmed, for it is what it is unquestionably. It is different with man: sent forth from the natural domain of species into the hazard of the solitary category, surrounded by the air of a chaos which came into being with him, secretly and bashfully he watches for a Yes which allows him to be and which can come to him only from one human person to another.
Bruce Young - On Levinas
By “face” Levinas means the human face (or in French, visage), but not thought of or experienced as a physical or aesthetic object. Rather, the first, usual, unreflective encounter with the face is as the living presence of another person and, therefore, as something experienced socially and ethically. “Living presence,” for Levinas, would imply that the other person (as someone genuinely other than myself) is exposed to me and expresses him or herself simply by being there as an undeniable reality that I cannot reduce to images or ideas in my head. This impossibility of capturing the other conceptually or otherwise indicates the other’s “infinity” (i.e., irreducibility to a finite [bounded] entity over which I can have power). The other person is, of course, exposed and expressive in other ways than through the literal face (e.g., through speech, gesture, action, and bodily presence generally), but the face is the most exposed, most vulnerable, and most expressive aspect of the other’s presence.
https://english.byu.edu/faculty/youngb/levinas/face.pdf
Levinas: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (1961)
Meaning is the face of the Other, and all recourse to words takes place already within the primordial face to face of language.
The face, preeminently expression, formulates the first word: the signifier arising at the thrust of his sign, as eyes that look at you.
The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation.
[T]he Other faces me and puts me in question and obliges me.
The being that expresses itself imposes itself, but does so precisely by appealing to me with its destitution and nudity--its hunger--without my being able to be deaf to that appeal. Thus in expression the being that imposes itself does not limit but promotes my freedom, by arousing my goodness. . . . The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation, which no “interiority” permits avoiding. . . . The will is free to assume this responsibility in whatever sense it likes; it is not free to refuse this responsibility itself; it is not free to ignore the meaningful world into which the face of the Other has introduced it.
To approach the Other in conversation is to welcome his expression, in which at each instant he overflows the idea a thought would carry away from it. It is therefore to receive from the Other beyond the capacity of the I, which means exactly: to have the idea of infinity. But this also means: to be taught. The relation with the Other, or Conversation, is a non-allergic relation, an ethical relation; but inasmuch as it is welcomed this conversation is a teaching. Teaching is not reducible to maieutics; it comes from the exterior and brings me more than I contain. In its non-violent transitivity the very epiphany of the face is produced.
Abraham Joshua Heschel: Who Is Man
"The man of our time is losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating, he seeks to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, and act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To be entertained is a passive state - it is to receive pleasure afforded by an amusing act or a spectacle. Entertainment is a diversion, a distraction of the attention of the mind from the preoccupation of daily living. Celebration is a confrontation, giving attention to the transcendent meaning of one's actions.
Celebration is an act of expressing respect or reverence for that which one needs or honors. In modern usage, the term suggests demonstrations, often public demonstrations, of joy and festivity, such as singing, shouting, speechmaking, feasting, and the like. Yet what I mean is not outward ceremony and public demonstration, but rather inward appreciation, lending spiritual form to everyday acts. Its essence is to call attention to the sublime or solemn aspects of living, to rise above the confines of consumption.
To celebrate is to share in a greater joy, to participate in an eternal drama. In acts of consumption the intention is to please our own selves; in acts of celebration the intention is to extol God, the spirit, the source of blessing."