This video is about the very interesting verse of the first chapter Genesis, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, na'ase 'adam betzalmenu kidmutenu.
So first of all why is it in the plural? Who is the Us? Well there are various suggestions made by that. One is the royal We, we find often in ancient eastern ideas using kings, using the royal We. So it would be customary for the King of Kings to use the royal We. It's also possible that the ancients are using the well known ancient or eastern mythological notion of the pagan deities assembled by having God talking to the heavenly court, which would make perfect sense. But finally there is a great medieval Rabbi named Albo who said that God took the best quality of every animal to make the human being and it would make sense since God - we know the animals are in the garden according to the first chapter of Genesis by the time human beings are created, the God will be speaking to the animals.
That makes perfect sense in terms of the basic understanding of what human beings are, which is that we have the spiritual dimension of God and the physical dimension of a mammal and where we combine the two, which gives us the full range of human emotions and the human psyche and the spiritual quality that's inherent to human beings.
That leads us to the second point about Adam, why does it say Adam? First of all why does it say Eve? Why doesn't it just say the male mammal? Usually in the Bible, often times it uses the word man or male for dealing with both sexes, in fact, it says later in the Torah, in the same portion that [Non-English] God made man and woman together. So this is not specifically just about a male, it's about human race. And then what else do we learn from the idea that there is Adam? Not necessarily people believe there is actually only one guy, of course I mean fundamentalists believe that but other people don't but it still makes the point in principal that's made by the Rabbis that therefore no one could say that my lineage is better than yours as we all come from the same person. There is total human equality in the realm of respect for human beings.
Let me get to the phrase of betzalmenu kidmutenu B'tzelem Elohim. Was it mean to be made in the image of god? Well we have the, in ancient Assyria, the royal steels which talk about the image of God and therefore makes perfect sense that the human being then represents God's spirit here on earth and we have ancient and recent text which talk about how the King's image is like that of a God and so what the Torah does is democratize that by saying, "Every human being has a spiritual image of God." And that leads us to the fundamental Jewish value point about B'tzelem Elohim which comes from the word [Non-English] the image of God, that every human being is made with B'tzelem Elohim, not just a certain kind of person, therefore every human being deserves complete respect because they are made with B'tzelem Elohim.
So we learn all of these things from this small verse it's few words Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, that either God is talking just God is talking, using the royal We or God is talking with the angels or God is talking with the animals, it's saying, "Let us make a human being that consists of my qualities and your best qualities." And then the idea of the Adam again to teach us that we all are equal, that we all have the same lineage, and finally the image of God, the nobility and high purpose of human nature.
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