All Created in the Image of God

Yesterday, I was reading the parasha for this week (וָֽאֶתְחַנַּ֖ן Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11) and found myself taking screenshot after screenshot. What a lot is packed into this portion!

Early on, I was entranced by the line (4:33):

הֲשָׁ֣מַ֥ע עָם֩ ק֨וֹל אֱלֹהִ֜ים מְדַבֵּ֧ר מִתּֽוֹךְ־הָאֵ֛שׁ כַּֽאֲשֶׁר־שָׁמַ֥עְתָּ אַתָּ֖ה וַיֶּֽחִי:

Has a nation ever heard the voice of God speaking from the center of the fire as you [singular] have heard and lived?

This image is so evocative! The people (remember, it’s their parents’ generation at this point in their wanderings) are standing in front of Mount Sinai, thunder and lightning and volcanic eruptions and every possible display at the top of it, while God proclaims the Ten Commandments for all to hear. The awesome power expressed by this image Is equaled in my mind only by the Rabbinic reference to God as “the One who spoke and the world came into being.” THAT is truly almost too big to comprehend! And Moses shoots his speech like an arrow directly into the heart of each of his listeners by using the singular form of the pronoun “you” – YOU have heard these words personally; YOU have witnessed this unprecedented event. Never before or since in the history of a religion has the foundational revelation been made in the hearing of ALL the people, not just a single prophet.

My various Mussar groups in recent times have talked about the concept of Awe, for which the Hebrew word (יראה) can be translated as either “Awe” or “Fear.” What is the nature of this God whom we worship and toward Whom we are supposed to experience Awe and Fear? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, occasionally both at the same instant. Please pause right here in your reading and contemplate that for a moment before you continue.

In verse 44 of this same chapter, we next encounter a familiar line:

וְזֹ֖את הַתּוֹרָ֑ה אֲשֶׁר־שָׂ֣ם משֶׁ֔ה לִפְנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:

And this is the Torah [teaching] that Moses placed before the children of Israel.

I love reading along innocently in the parasha and suddenly stumbling across a familiar song or line from our liturgy – in this case, part of what we sing as we return the Torah to the Ark after we have read from it.

Farther along (5:3), we read this amazing verse:

לֹ֣א אֶת־אֲבֹתֵ֔ינוּ כָּרַ֥ת יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶת־הַבְּרִ֣ית הַזֹּ֑את כִּ֣י אִתָּ֔נוּ אֲנַ֨חְנוּ אֵ֥לֶּה פֹ֛ה הַיּ֖וֹם כֻּלָּ֥נוּ חַיִּֽים:

Not with our [fore]fathers did God make this covenant but with us, we who are here today, all of us living.

This was a central point made at Mount Sinai to their parents – that this was binding not only on those present but on generations as yet unborn, all who wish to enter into the covenant – and is now being renewed a generation later as part of Moses’ farewell address. All who wish to join in the covenant, the descendants of those who were there at the beginning by either blood or heart, were standing right there at Mount Sinai and hearing these words, right amidst the throng of recently-freed slaves. Can you remember them echoing in your own head?

Three lines later, we have the full restatement of the Ten Commandments, even more explicitly binding this new generation to the covenant that had originally been made with their parents. Hear them again, know what it is that you’re ratifying!

As if this weren’t enough for this single parasha, we move on to chapter 6 and find the Shema and then its first full paragraph. The watchword of our faith as ethical monotheists:

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהֹוָ֥ה אֶחָֽד:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God; the Lord is one.

All my life, I have put myself in the throng standing at Mount Sinai. Indeed, I confess to you that I have had flashes of ancestral memory and really do believe that I was there, or at least the DNA that has come down to me. But now I think about standing before another mountain, the Jordan River behind me and the Promised Land on its other side, facing the man who has led my family through the desert for my entire life, speaking to God and passing ordinances along to me, knowing (because he has told us so) that we will never see him again but will lose him here before we ever turn toward our future home. And the voice of Moses himself is what is proclaiming our most important prayer before me and all of my relatives and friends. How can I not jump forward with great enthusiasm and sign onto this renewal of our covenant with God?

There is only one God, we are told. Serve this God with every fiber of your being in all of your daily pursuits. Create symbols to remind you of this obligation and speak of it frequently, teaching it to your children so that their generation too will honor the covenant and serve our God.

One final nugget in this parasha, an anticlimax after what has gone before, but still it is fun to stumble over lines from our liturgy – straight from the Haggadah at 6:21, preceded by an order to teach this to our children, we read:

עֲבָדִ֛ים הָיִ֥ינוּ לְפַרְעֹ֖ה בְּמִצְרָ֑יִם וַיֹּֽצִיאֵ֧נוּ יְהֹוָ֛ה מִמִּצְרַ֖יִם בְּיָ֥ד חֲזָקָֽה:

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God took us out of Egypt with a strong hand.

During the Passover seder, this line follows the Four Questions, our children’s ritualized way of asking what this seder and this entire holiday are about. We are told BY MOSES how to answer their questions, and so we do, year after year!

So how do we bring this parasha forward to speak to us in the world we live in today? As usual, I turn first to the eminent Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who seems to be writing more brilliantly than ever since he retired as Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom. He points to two lines in our parasha, 6:17-18:

שָׁמ֣וֹר תִּשְׁמְר֔וּן אֶת־מִצְוֹ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֑ם וְעֵֽדֹתָ֥יו וְחֻקָּ֖יו אֲשֶׁ֥ר צִוָּֽךְ:

וְעָשִׂ֛יתָ הַיָּשָׁ֥ר וְהַטּ֖וֹב בְּעֵינֵ֣י יְהֹוָ֑ה לְמַ֨עַן֙ יִ֣יטַב לָ֔ךְ

Keep diligently the commandments of the Lord your God, and the testimonies and the statutes which He has commanded.

Do what is correct and good in the eyes of God in order that it will be good for you.

Rabbi Sacks cites Maimonides, who says there Is more to the moral and ethical life than merely keeping the commandments diligently. “[S]ignificant areas of the moral life … cannot be reduced to rules. That is because rules deal in generalities, and human lives are particular. We are all different. So is every situation in which we find ourselves. Good people know when to speak, when to be silent, when to praise, when to challenge. They hear the unspoken word, sense the concealed pain, focus on the other person rather than on themselves, and are guided by a deeply internalised [sic.] moral sense that leads them instinctively away from anything less than the right and the good. …

“I believe that we make a fundamental error when we think that all we need to know and keep are the rules governing interactions bein adam le-chavero, between us and our fellows. The rules are essential but also incomplete. We need to develop a conscience that does not permit us to wrong, harm or hurt someone even if the rules permit us to do so. The moral life is an infinite game which cannot be reduced to rules. We need to learn and internalise a sense of ‘the right and the good.’”

This is the lesson for our world today, a lesson that we so sorely need. We do live in a framework of rules – laws, regulations, statutes – to which we are specifically subject. But there is a broader moral and ethical framework, a set of understandings about who we are and how we should be treating our fellow human beings, and animals, and all life surrounding us on this planet that we call home. What is “the right and the good”? What would we never want said or done to or about ourselves or our loved ones? The “in-group” for each of us, the tribe? Our innate sense of justice and our empathy toward others teach us that we should never behave in such a way to the other, either. No hateful words or actions. No public ridicule or denigration. This widespread incivility which we see around the world now, not just in our own country, will only stop when we realize that the “other” is just us in another form. Human mind, human heart, human spirit, all created in the image of God just as we were ourselves. May this become a world in which everybody is treated with respect simply for being a human being, regardless of each person’s words or beliefs. May this pandemic of “baseless hatred” – the reason for the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem! – fade away in our time.