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[This was first posted in 2012 and time for a repost as part of our “looking back” series during this season of introspection in preparation for the biblical feast of Shavuot, the giving of the Torah on Sinai.
What does it mean for humankind to be made in God’s “image” or “likeness” —-
- when He has no physical representation that resembles humans,
- when humans do not share His Divine Power nor any of His ‘omni’ attributes,
- what is it about HIM, what of the Divine Image is man “like?
Some answers given;
- Free Will
- Co-creators of human life
- gift of speech
- male and female
Jewish Rabbis have of course discussed this topic to death; after all the TORAH is their sacred Scripture and more than any people group, they would want to understand what it means for the one special created species, humans, to be made in the image of the Creator. It would be superfluous to add anything more to their dissection of one simple sentence in the creation narrative, so here is one section of a book that is mind-expanding, please read the excerpts all the way to the end because just like forensic experts, the Rabbis have left no stone unturned!
For those interested in downloading this ebook from amazon.com, readable on your free kindle app, here is the title and list of CONTENTS:
MUST READ: TORAH THROUGH TIME:
Understanding Bible Commentary,
From The Rabbinic Period to Modern Times
by Shai Cherry
Foreword by Marc Zvi Brettler
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- No Word Unturned
- The Creation of Humanity
- The Sons of Adam and Eve
- The Hebrew Slave
- Korah and His Gang
- The Daughters of Zelphehad
Epilogue
The featured excerpts are from Chapter 2: The Creation of Humanity – Genesis 1:26-31-—Admin1.]
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For those who take it for granted that God is incorporeal, the notion that we humans are created in the Divine image must refer to something other than our physical body. Yet there are biblical verses which can plausibly be read as suggesting that God does have physical form (Exod. 33:20 and Isa. 6:5).
Perhaps the presence of these verses explains why the assumption of Divine incorporeality does not inform Rabbinic comments. “In all of rabbinic literature there is not a single statement that categorically denies that God has body or form . . . . Instead of asking, ‘Does God have a body?’we should inquire, ‘What kind of body does God have?.'”
Resh Lakish said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya: The knob of Adam’s heel outshines the sun, how much more so his countenance. (Leviticus Rabbah 20:2, Rabbinic compilation edited by 5th century, Land of Israel; cf. Baba Batra 58a.
According to this tradition, Adam had a body of light. Working backwards, God’s image must similarly be luminous. Indeed, in one of the oft-repeated passages from the Torah, we have the all-too-familiar phrase translated literally by Everett Fox: “May YHWH shine his face upon you and favor you!” (Num. 6:25.) God is associated throughout the Torah with light and fire imagery. God reveals himself to Moses through the burning bush (Exod. 3:1-4), later speaks to all of Israel from ‘the midst of the fire” (Deut. 5:4), and appears to Ezekiel as “what looked like fire” (Ezek. 1:26-28).
With this understanding, God has a body or form but it is not quite corporeal.
The first humans, made in the Divine image, somehow lost their luster. Opinions vary as to the reason. But one human, according to the Torah, does regain the aura. When Moses descends from Mt. Sinai with the second set of tablets, he is unaware that his face is radiating light (Exod. 34:29). The disappointing epilogue to the story is that Moses was forced to veil his face in public after descending from the mountain of God. The Israelites were not ready to recognize the illuminating stage of God in their leader (Exod. 34:33). Perhaps that is why the culmination and climax of Judaism’s central prayer, a map which traces the necessary blessings for a world at peace, reads: “God will bless us all, as one, through the light of the Divine countenance.”
In the Rabbinic imagination, the moment we regain the image and recognize the image in all humanity, we will have entered the Messianic era.
7. But tselem [image] designates natural form, i.e., the principle which substantiates a thing and makes it what it is, its reality as that thing. In man’s case this is the source of human awareness that it isaid of man that “He created him in the form of God.” (Rambam, 1138-1204, Egypt)
Rambam was one of the leading Aristotelian philosophers of the Middle Ages. He maintained that it was nothing short of heresy to understand God in corporeal terms. Indeed, he devoted the first section of his philosophical work, The Guide for the Perplexed, to explain away the anthropomorphisms and anthropopathisms of the Torah (attributing human form and emotions to God).
In our comment, Rambam understands image not as bodily, but as Aristotelian form, that underlying principle which informs the object in question. For us humans, according to the Aristotelian philosopher, our form is the intellect. We think, therefore we are human. Our intellectual awareness and capacity are what distinguish us from the rest of God’s creation. For Rambam, our intellect is the human soul.
Rambam is not only reflecting Aristotle in this comment, but Hellenistic philosophy in general. The Hebrew Bible has a monistic anthropology—our body and soul are a unified whole. The dualism of body and soul, or more extreme, body versus soul, is foreign to the TANAKH. Anthropological dualism is a product of Hellenism, generations before Aristotle, which distinguished between the immortal soul and the mortal body. Pauline Christianity incorporates this Hellenistic anthropology (see, e.g., II Corinthians 5:1-4) in a way that Rabbinic Judaism resisted. According to one contemporary scholar, “Rabbinic Judaism, in contrast, defined the human being as an animated body and not as a soul trapped or even housed or clothed in a body.”
Maimonides’ interpretation of the image of God as incorporeal also countered certain trends that emerged in the early Rabbinic period associated with ancient Jewish mysticism. The depiction of God in grossly anthropomorphic terms, with gigantic dimensions, was central to the Shiur Komah, a text from the early centuries of the Common era. A talmudic legend imagines the first human to be humongous, having ostensibly been created in the image of God. Shiur Komah gives the cosmic dimensions of the God after which that human was modeled.
Medieval Jewish mysticism, beginning with the late-12th century text, Bahir, rehabilitates the image of the Divine body and provides a foundation for the distinctive vocabulary of the Kabbalah.
8. [The plural language in our verse] can be compared to a king who is sovereign over all. He wants to demonstrate that everything is included in him and he is everything. Therefore he speaks about himself in the plural. So, too, the Holy One, blessed be He, when He wanted to show that the entire universe is His, that everything is included in His hand, He spoke in the plural to show that He is everything. (Zohar Hadash, Midrash Han’elam, 16, 13th c., Spain).
Although much of the Zohar, as well as later Kabbalah, often depicts the Divine in the shape of a human, this comment suggests that humans don’t just corresponded to the image of God, but are actually in the image of God, i.e., inside the Divine. All of creation, not just humans, is included in and encompassed by God. This theological stance, sometimes called panentheism, indicates that all of creation is within God, but that God also transcends the limitations of what we perceive as creation. The Zohar calls that which is beyond all human ability to comprehend, the Ein Sof, or endlessness.
In the Rabbinic period, God’s image was often understood as physical, somehow corresponding to our own physical being but on a much larger scale. Alternatively, God was depicted as a light being, having an image but not a body. In the Middle Ages, the philosophical tradition rejected any kind of bodily form for God, instead emphasizing our intellectual form as that which links us to the Divine. The Kabbalistic tradition insists that we can know something about the inner life of God by better understanding ourselves. In some symbolic way, the image of the Divine incorporates the intellectual aspects so important for the philosophical tradition, but within a framework that includes the motional and sexual aspects of embodiment, as well. Finally, we saw an example of how the Kabbalists suggested that all of creation is comprehended by God, in God’s image. In this interpretation, image is not a representation of God’s being, it is God’s being.
MODERN IMAGES OF LIKENESS
In addition, and perhaps in response, to Ramban’s emphasis on the intellect, the mystical tradition emphasized the power of imagination. The Hebrew for imagination is dimyon, which echoes both the name adam (human) and our likeness (d’muti) to the Divine. (We are called adam in Genesis one because we are created in the Divine likeness. The second creation story (2:7) links our name to the substance from which we were created, adamah, the earth.) The union of intellect and imagination corresponds to human being made in the image and likeness of God.
9. “Adam” is from the same root as dimyon (imagination), and the aleph is extra. The advantage of humanity over all other creatures is our power of imagination. (Rabbi Bunim of Przysucha, 1765-1827, Poland).
10. There is no doubt that the term “image of God” in the first account refers to man’s inner charismatic endowment as a creative being. Man’s likeness to God’s expresses itself in man’s striving and ability to become a creator. (Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1903-1993, Lithuania and United States).
Rabbi Bunim represents the stream of thought which resists the glorification of the intellect at the expense of the rest of the human being. Realistically, not everyone can be a scientist. So, is it fair to use intellect as the exclusive, or even primary measure of one’s humanity? Rabbi Bunim isn’t only interested in expanding our pool of who can be considered fully human, his anthropology underscores that we are more than just disembodied intellects. Our imaginative faculty brings out what is distinctive about us humans. We can imagine a different world. No other animal has that capacity.
Rav Soloveitchik brings Rambam together with Rabbi Bunim. Marrying our intellect and imagination, we can work toward a better world. But it is not just the capacity with which we’re endowed, it is the need, the yearning to express ourselves creatively that is the marker of the Divine likeness. God imagines a world and creates it. We can, too.
11. We humans are the only creation able to do what we consider to be good, according to our will. And in this, we are likened to our Creator. “The superiority of humans over beasts is naught” (Eccles. 3:19). Only the “naught,” the power to oppose and say, “No!” This is according to His likeness. (Aharon Lewin, 1879-1941, Poland)
Rabbi Lewin creatively rereads that biblical existentialist, Kohelet, who asserts that there is no difference between humans and beasts. For the Rabbi, the difference is our ability to say “no.” We are like God because we have free will. Indeed, as one modern commentator points out, we don’t look all that different from monkeys, so our verse must mean something other than physical resemblance. Unlike monkeys, we can engage in long-range planning. Or, as we tell college students (and graduate students), you are deferring benefit. It’s true that we’re often impulsive, but we do not have to be. It’s that measure of self-restraint that makes us fully human. And when we resist the temptation to cash in early, to cut corners or indulge in immediate gratification, that is when we are most like God, slowly and patiently working toward the fulfillment of the vision. That is why we read about the six days of creation. Eventually, Genesis promises us, the seventh day will arrive.
Alternatively, or additionally, Rabbi Lewin’s comment might be about saying “no” to others, rather than to ourselves. To be godly, we must oppose the behavior of the beasts, in human garb, who follow their animal instincts. They have their designs for domination, but we are warned against following the multitude or the mighty to do evil (Exod. 23:2). We have the power to oppose and say, “No!” Relinquishing that prerogative, abdicating that responsibility, puts us on the same plane as the beasts. According to the halakhah, “just following orders” is no excuse for criminal behavior. A chilling postscript for our commentator: Rabbi Lewin, a communal leader in Poland, was murdered by the Nazis in July of 1941.
All of the commentators in this section focus on our likeness to God. Although one could chalk up the repetition (“in our image, after our likeness”) to poetic style, a traditional assumption about the Torah is that all repetition is meaningful. Being created in the image must then mean something different than being created after the likeness. Similarly, the different prepositions in and after, must bear significance. The medieval commentator S’forno makes the point that, unlike God, not all of our choices, by which we exercise our likeness to God, are for the best. That’s why our deeds are only “after” God’s likeness rather than “in” God’s likeness.
FRAMING CREATION
Verse 27 introduces the feminine into Torah. But it introduces the masculine, too. Throughout this chapter, I have awkwardly translated the adam (with a lower case a) of our previous verse as humanity or humankind, as does Fox. In our present verse, we are informed that humankind, as a species, come in two genders and both are created at the same time. That is exactly how several medieval commentators, who focus on the immediate context, understand adam, as humanity. That is how Everett Fox translates it. So why do we have this idea that Eve, a single woman, was created after Adam, a single man? Because she was, at least according to the second story of creation that begins with the second half of Genesis 2:4.
There are two differing accounts of creation in the Hebrew Bible. (The Christian Bible doubles that! There are four different gospels retelling the birth, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.) Before feminist sensibilities raised our awareness about language, man could refer to men or to men and women. Hebrew works the same way. If we take the first creation story in isolation, it’s clear that the term adam refers to the species known as humans. All the animals in Genesis one were created as entire species. It’s equally clear that the adam in Genesis 2 is a single individual, not yet masculine, perhaps, but singular. It is only when we read Genesis one anticipating the second creation story in Genesis 2 that we conflate these 2 discrete narratives. One popular method to resolve the real contradictions between these 2 accounts of human creation is to understand the adam of 1:26 as singular and 1:27, which introduces the feminine, as a preview of the future creation in Genesis 2. The Torah is telling us, according to this line of thinking, that there will be a woman created later in the 6th day, but we’ll have to await the next chapter to get the full story.
Given the juxtaposition of these 2 creation narratives, attempts at interpreting the adam of Genesis one as a single male are understandable. Rabbinic assumptions about the perfection of the Torah preclude the possibility that there should be contradictions. As we saw, a few of the medieval pashtanim (peshat seeker) anticipated modern Bible scholars by acknowledging that we have two different stories of creation, though without suggesting that the human authors of these different areas lived hundreds of years apart and in different parts of the Land of Israel. As a result of reading these stories together as a single description of the creation of Adam and Eve, interpretative possibilities emerge from the biblical landscape.
12. Rabbi Jeremiah, son of Elazar said: “At the time that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first human, He created it as a hermaphrodite, as is written, ‘male and female He created them . . . and called their name Adam on the day He created them.'” (Gen. 5:2)
Rav Samuel, son of Nachman said: “At the time that the Holy One, blessed be He, created the first human, He created it with two faces and then cut it and made backs for each.”
They challenged him: “One of his sides.’ Like it says, ‘the side of the Tabernacle’ (Exod. 26:20).”
(Genesis Rabbah)
The first human being, in the singular, was a hermaphrodite. That explains why verse 27 includes both male and female. The name of that entity, according to Gen. 5:2, was Adam. The male and female were distinct personalities sharing the same body. Rav Samuel then goes further into the anatomy of Adam. It had two faces, one on each side, with corresponding genitalia. What God then did was to split this primordial androgyne in two and sewed up each of their back sides.
So far, this midrash has explained how Adam, understood to be a single person cold be both male and female. The midrash then voices opposition. “Wait a second! You’re ignoring the verse that says God took man’s rib and made woman.” But Rav Samuel has a ready retort: “I’m not ignoring anything. You’re misunderstnding the verse. Just like tsela means side in the description of the Tabernacle, so, too, it means side here. God took one of the sides of the hermaphrodite and split it down the middle.” Now, our midrash has the additional benefit of reconciling the two creation narratives. That’s efficiency!
This Rabbinic midrash has had far-reaching influence on subsequent Jewish understandings of the creation of humans. Many midrashim suggest that to be fully human, man and woman require one another in order to reflect the first Divinely-created human. A similar image of a hermaphrodite being split apart occurs in Plato’s Symposium. When the halves of these former wholes find each other, lifelong partnerships result. For Rav Samuel, it seems any human couple can house the Divine Presence, as did the sides of the Tabernacle.
This midrash of the hermaphrodite could not have been the original intention of the author of either creation story. But I can’t say that such a conception was necessarily foreign to the biblical editor or redactor who juxtaposed our stories in purposeful sequence. There is a possibility that the redactor sought to conflate these two stories, rather than to present two opposing stories side by side. If conflating or merging was the redactor’s intention, something like a hermaphroditic human may have been how the redactor intended his audience to read Genesis I. Said differently, our redactor may have believed that these 2 stories express different aspects of creation that are complementary, not contradictory. The word tzela usually means side, so why not in the second creation story, too? Genesis 1, in isolation, doesn’t mention Eve (or Adam). But reading Genesis 1, after knowing the story of Genesis 2, frames the creation of humanity in such a way that the reader is now receptive to either a single hermaphrodite, or a single couple, the Adam and Eve of Genesis 2.
ENGENDERING THE IMAGE
13. Image is male and likeness is female. Zohar 3:35b, Tzac)
Each Hebrew noun is either masculine or feminine; Hebrew has no neutered it. The Zohar’s grammar is correct: image is male and likeness is female. The grammar of theology and anthropology is, therefore, gender inclusive. But the Zohar is doing more than teaching grammar.
According to Kabbalah, each human appendage corresponds to the Divine image which is also understood as a map of the energy flows within God. The name for these energy stations is the s’firot. In the world of the s’firot, the upper nine s’firot reflect the male image. The 10th sefirah, sometimes called the shekinah, or Divine Presence, is depicted as female. Altogether, the male and female s’firot comprise the totality of the Divine image and likeness. For the Zohar, only when the masculine and feminine aspects of God are in union will the Divine blessings flow. The mystic’s charge is to unite the male and female s’firot through ritual acts and also through proper sexual union. The male mystic coming together with his wife stimulates the corresponding elements in the world of the s’firot to join. When male and female, image and likeness, achieve union, the bounty of Divine munificence overflows from the s’firotic world and brings blessings into our own. Stripping the myth and metaphysics from this mystical interpretation, sex is good for a marriage.
14. Jung taught that in each of us there are personality traits more commonly associated with the opposite gender. The goal of a healthy individual is to integrate the animal/animus within each psyche. In the language of Genesis, masculine” and “feminine” together make up the Divine image—not “male” and “female” that distinguishes the sexes in other animals (Gen. 7:2). Each human has masculine and feminine within him or herself, and our goal is to integrate those elements in our dedication to following in God’s ways (Deut. 28:9). A couple, regardless of gender, should also enjoy a holy balance of traditionall masculine and feminine energies. (Meshi, contemporary, United States)
When God created the human zakhar u’nekevah, our other commentators read the Hebrew as male and female. Meshi reads it as masculine and feminine. Meshi is more concerned with psychology than anatomy. His comment strikes the contemporary chord of getting in touch with your inner, opposite gender. While the mystical tradition focuses on the interplay between male and female, it is, nevertheless, true that both male and female aspects are operating within the Divine world as represented by the s’firot. The unity of God is a cardinal principle of Judaism. Meshi is suggesting that the unification of our traditionally masculine and feminine attributes is essential for us as we strive to imitate God.
THE OTHER WOMAN
15. Lilith and Adam were created as equals. When Lilith desired to lie on top during intercourse, Adam refused, saying that he was superior. Lilith flew away by pronouncing the ineffable name of god. Angelic attempts to persuade Lilith to return to Adam failed. (from The Alphabet of Ben Sira [c. 9th c.]; cf. Genesis Rabbah 18:4).
Lilith appears only once in the TANAKH (Is. 34:14) as a night demon, having no connection to the creation stories. Rabbinic creation legends include the story of a woman, created prior to Eve of the Garden of Eden, whom Adam rejected. These story lines merge in the early Middle Ages as another approach to resolve the tension between our two creation stories. The adam that was created male and female in Genesis I was a couple. The woman, Lilith claimed equality with her male counterpart—the plain sense of Genesis 1—and Adam couldn’t tolerate it. So Lilith gets replaced by Eve, who is made from Adam; this somehow makes him superior.
Not only does the Lilith legend resolve the seeming contradiction between our two creation stories, it also provides an explanation for what remains a medical mystery: crib death. In medieval tradition, Lilith becomes the embodiment of the femme fatale, avenging herself by killing infants and by seducing men in their sleep to cause nocturnal emissions. The mystical tradition further develops the legend of Lilith so that she becomes the queen of demons. The Alphabet of Ben Sira may have been written as a farce, but the Lilith legend took on a life of its own. The latest twist in this legend comes as Jewish (and gentile) women have re-appropriated Lilith and claimed her as the archetypal feminist. Indeed, according to The Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith was more powerful than Adam: she knew how to use the power of the Divine name.