MAN – MADE IN THE IMAGE OF MAN

One of the mishnayot in Avot that superficially appears to have nothing to do with middot and mussar—advice that guides our behaviour and addresses our less noble thoughts—is a teaching by Rabbi Akiva that starts like this (Avot 3:18):

חָבִיב אָדָם שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, חִבָּה יְתֵרָה נוֹדַֽעַת לוֹ שֶׁנִּבְרָא בְּצֶֽלֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: כִּי בְּצֶֽלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם

Beloved is man, for he was created in [God’s] image; with even greater love is it made known to him that he was created in the image, as it says, "For in the image of God, He made man" (Bereishit 9:6).

Knowing how much God love His human creations, a category to which we all belong, may inspire a warm feeling inside us, but it is hard to pinpoint a way in which this knowledge, of itself, is a game-changer in our daily lives.

Many scholars accept the view of Rabbi Shmuel di Uceda, in his commentary-cum-compendium Midrash Shmuel, that this teaching constitutes a warning that the act of murder is deserving of capital punishment. Since every human being is created in the image of God, the killing of any human is a form of erasure or diminution of the image of God—whatever that term might mean in relation to an incorporeal deity.

But there are other approaches which make up with their originality for what they lack in terms of literal accuracy. Thus, citing the Venetian scholar Rabbi Moshe Chafetz, Rabbi Norman Lamm (Foundation of Faith, ed. R’ Mark Dratch) takes a slight liberty with the mishnah—part of the Oral Law—by shifting a comma of which Rabbi Akiva would surely have been unaware, since he lived around 600 years before any form of punctuation was introduced into Hebrew. Nevertheless, what he writes is thought-provoking.

In short, by shifting the comma so that instead of following Elokim it follows b’tzelem, the meaning of the verse from Bereishit shifts from the usual

“for in the image of God, He made man"

to

“for in [his, i.e. man’s] image, God made man”.

Rabbi Akiva is now taken to say that God creates each man in his own individual image, with his own essence, his own characteristic being. It is each person’s own tzelem that gives him or her their own metaphysical value, their differentness and their absolute uniqueness.

Now we can ask what is our take-away message in terms of middot and mussar? Arguably it is that, if God has gone to the trouble of creating each person as an individual, we should be careful to recognize their unique personal qualities and should take care not to commoditise them or judge them in general terms. Each person must be assessed on the basis of their individual qualities—and respected because those qualities and their potential to use those qualities are hard-wired into them by God.

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