What Is True Beauty

The Sages taught in a baraita: Rahab aroused impure thoughts by her name, i.e., the mere mention of her name would inspire lust for her; Yael, by her voice; Abigail, by remembering her; Michal, the daughter of Saul, by her appearance.... Rav Naḥman said to him: I say: Rahab, Rahab, and it does not affect me. Rabbi Yitzchak said to Rav Naḥman: When I said this, I was specifically referring to one who knows her personally and recognizes her beauty. Only for one who has met Rahab in person is the mere mention of her name capable of arousing lust.

With regard to Rabbi Yoḥanan’s physical features, the Gemara adds that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: I alone remain of the beautiful people of Jerusalem. The Gemara continues: One who wishes to see something resembling the beauty of Rabbi Yoḥanan should bring a new, shiny silver goblet from the smithy and fill it with red pomegranate seeds [partzidaya] and place a diadem of red roses upon the lip of the goblet, and position it between the sunlight and shade. That luster is a semblance of Rabbi Yoḥanan’s beauty.

A woman of grace and beauty is not praised for those attributes, rather its all illusory, and the woman who fears G-d, that alone should be praised

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel said: There were no days of joy in Israel greater than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur.On these days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments in order not to shame any one who had none. All these garments required immersion. The daughters of Jerusalem come out and dance in the vineyards. What would they say? Young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose for yourself. Do not set your eyes on beauty but set your eyes on the family. “Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears the Lord, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). And it further says, “Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her works praise her in the gates” (ibid, 31:31). Section three: Similarly it says, “O maidens of Zion, go forth and gaze upon King Solomon wearing the crown that his mother gave him on his wedding day, on the day of the gladness of his heart” (Song of Songs 3:11). “On his wedding day”: this refers to Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah). “And on the day of the gladness of his heart”: this refers to the building of the Temple; may it be rebuilt speedily in our days, Amen.

(2) He had a son whose name was Saul, an excellent young man; no one among the Israelites was handsomer than he; he was a head taller than any of the people.

And he thought: "Surely the LORD's anointed stands before Him." It means Samuel said in his heart or his mouth because he thought that this one was the king that God had commanded him to anoint because he was the oldest of Jesse's sons and also he looked handsome and he was tall like Saul and he [Samuel] thought that Hashem chooses men who are handsome and tall and have an appearance that makes them look regal as that would cause the nation to feel impressed by them. He (Samuel) had said about Saul, "Do you see the man that God has chosen? For there is no one like him throughout the nation." And Samuel thought that God would choose a tall and handsome/ regal man for the kingship so that the nation would fear him and aside from this [the man's] heart would be good and straight and the explanation of "the Lord's anointed" refers to the fact that God would set their path/ Hashem would be with him, etc.

The essence of the Rachel was nothing but pleasent

(2) Our sages inform us that on one occasion Potiphar’s wife assembled a number of Egyptian women so that they might see how very handsome Joseph was. But before she summoned Joseph she gave each of them an ethrog and a knife. When they saw Joseph’s handsome countenance, they cut their hands. She said to them: “If this can happen to you, who see him only once, how much more so does it happen to me, who must look at him constantly.” Each day she strove to entice him with words, but he suppressed his evil inclination. Whence do we know this? From what we read in the section: His master’s wife cast her eyes upon him (Gen. 39:7).

The Sages taught: With regard to a beautiful captive, the verse states: “And sees among the captives,” teaching that this halakha applies only if he notices her when she is a captive. The expression “a woman” teaches that she is permitted even if she is a married woman. The phrase “a beautiful woman” indicates that the Torah here spoke only in response to the evil inclination, as it is due to her beauty that he desired her. And why does the Torah permit this?

(3) It is this thought ‎that Moses expressed in our verse when he said: “and ‎‎Hashem has guaranteed you this day that this nation be a ‎precious nation for Him, etc.”‎. ‎
If you were to ask that if G’d, Who is all knowing, obviously ‎knew all this in advance, why did He bother to create the gentile ‎nations altogether? The answer is that G’d created the other ‎nations ‎לשם ולתפארת ולתהלה‎, “for His name, glory and splendour,” ‎so that He would be able to glory in Israel’s accomplishments by ‎comparison. If there were no inferior people who had started out ‎with the same attributes as the Israelites, Israel’s ‎accomplishments would not be appreciated as outstanding. The ‎word: ‎תפארת‎, “splendour,” is an alternate adjective used in ‎connection with the garments of the High Priest, (Exodus 28,2) a ‎garment worn externally, meant to reflect the inner beauty of the ‎wearer. When the prophet Micah 7,19 speaks of G’d ‎יכבוש עונותינו ‏ותשליך במצולות ים‎, “squeezing out our sins and throwing them ‎into the depths of the ocean,” the image before the mental eye of ‎the prophet was that of the person laundering dirty linen, and ‎seeing that not only the dirt has disappeared but the result being ‎something splendid, ‎תפארת‎. Showing someone how a person ‎thoroughly soiled by his sins, has become rehabilitated is surely ‎reason for the owner of that “garment” to boast about the ‎‎“reincarnation” that has occurred, especially when it was ‎spontaneous.‎ This is also the meaning of Rosh Hashanah 17 where the ‎process of removing sins is described as occurring ‎מעביר ראשון ‏ראשון‎, usually translated as “removing the sins in the order in ‎which they have been committed starting with the first.” Our ‎author understands this to mean that G’d had used the first sin ‎committed by the repentant sinners as something to decorate ‎Himself with as His first garment. It is appropriate therefore that ‎once the sinner turns penitent, that not the last, but the original ‎sin he has committed should be “turned inside out,” by being ‎converted into a merit.
‎[When a sinner persists in sinning, the “garments” in ‎which G’d wraps Himself, far from becoming something splendid, ‎become symbols of His progressive distancing His essence from ‎such a sinner, of course. Ed.]‎