In a recent interview promoting his new book, In God’s Image: How Western Civilization was Shaped by a Revolutionary Idea, Tomer Persico opened with the claim, “This idea that people are equal, that they have rights, this is chapter one in Genesis.”
Persico here is advancing the claim that B’reishit 1:26-27 constitutes a Divine mandate for ideological liberalism, and that liberalism is actually the root of Jewish political thought.
The implication is that these verses about man being made in the Divine image have always been understood as calls for liberal values of human rights and equality, and that the “religious right” in Israel has abandoned the traditional Jewish understanding when they advocate illiberal policies and dismiss liberal critics as adopting “Christian morality.”
In order to better understand the debate, we need to explore what our sages have to say about these verses, and the practical lessons they want us to learn from them.
The Torah states:
“ויאמר אלקים נעשה אדם בצלמנו כדמותנו… ויברא אלקים את האדם בצלמו, בצלם אלקים ברא אתו…”
“And G-d said, Let Us make Mankind in Our image, after Our likeness… So G-d created Mankind in His own image, in the image of G-d He created them…” (Koren Ḥumash translation)
Rashi, the preeminent medieval Torah commentator, gives the following explanations of the verse:
- “In Our image”: In our mold – The most widely learned commentary on Rashi’s commentary, Siftei Ḥakhamim, explains that the intention is “our mold” that we created for the human form, and not a mold of HaShem’s form, since He is formless.
- “After Our likeness”: To understand and to become intelligent – Siftei Ḥakhamim emphasizes that Rashi explains “likeness” with intellectual/spiritual traits, firmly rejecting a literal “likeness” – which becomes more explicit in the next line. The Rambam in the opening chapter of his Guide for the Perplexed, similarly explains that “image” refers to something’s essence and that the man’s Divine-like essence is his intellectual, a priori, perception.
- “So G-d created mankind in His own image”: In the mold that was made for him, since the rest of creation was formed by speech, and he was formed by the Divine hand.
- ”In the image of G-d He created them”: This explains that the mold created for him is the mold of the image of his Creator – The Maharal, in his Gur Aryeh commentary on Rashi, explains that this double language “mold of the image” implies distance from the original “image” and not an exact copy.
So how does Rashi’s understanding match up with Persico’s claims?
There’s a clear implication that man emulates the Divine in two capacities: “image” and “likeness.”
While “likeness” is relatively simple to understand as human intellect, “image” is tougher, since HaShem is infinite and non-corporeal. But whether we understand the concept of “image” or not, it’s hard to see how Persico translates “man is made in the Divine image” to a claim that the Torah insists upon the liberal conception of human rights and equality.
Other leading medieval Torah commentaries are similarly silent on the practical implications of these verses. In his commentary, the Ibn Ezra quotes Rav Sa’adya Gaon, explaining the concepts of “image” as the image (form) that HaShem chose for man (like Rashi and Siftei Ḥakhamim), and “likeness” as a reference to the dominion man exercises over the earth.
He emphasizes that no literal “Divine image” is intended. Rather, the Torah – being transmitted by humans to humans – must be in terms that humans understand. This explains why “image” and “likeness” are applied even to HaShem, who has no image or likeness.
The Ramban explains that “image” and “likeness” in the first verse refer not to the Creator but to the earth and the heavens. Man has a material body like the earth, and a metaphysical spirit like the heavens. He writes that “The image of G-d” in the second verse refers to man’s distinctiveness within creation.
If none of these classic “pashtanim” of the Torah, nor the earliest philosopher of Jewish thought, mention liberal ideals or human rights in their interpretations of this passage, where might we find the source of such an argument?
If we dig a little deeper in rabbinic sources, there are a few tannaic sources that learn the value of human life from the description of man’s creation in the Torah. But like the medieval commentaries, they remain largely silent on the implications of this assertion:
Pirkei Avot 3:14 states in the name of Rabbi Akiva, “Beloved is man since he was created in the Divine image.”
Rashi, in his commentary on this Mishna, writes that because man is so beloved, he has a duty to perform his Creator’s will. He teaches that this Divine love, expressed in the nature of our creation, should instill within us a deep sense of gratitude that motivates us to repay HaShem’s abundant kindness by studying his Torah and observing his commandments.
Rashi teaches that Rabbi Akiva understood the opening chapter of the Torah to be a source for human responsibility and obligation, rather than one of rights.
Similarly, the Mishna (Sanhedrin 4:5) states that “Adam was created alone to teach that anyone who destroys a soul from Israel, it is as if he destroyed an entire world.”
While at first glance this source seems to be a blanket statement placing the value of human life above all other considerations, it’s important to understand the Mishna in context. This isn’t an assertion of rights. When Israel had a Sanhedrin (high court) and lower courts with the autonomy to implement a death sentence, this line was part of the courts’ intimidation practices to discourage false testimonies. Witnesses were warned that if they bore false witness against a fellow Israelite, the gravity of this transgression (one of the Ten Commandments) was comparable to the destruction of an entire world.
Rather than being a warning to judges or kings not to execute those deserving the death penalty (of whom there is no shortage in the written and oral Torah), appealing to an absolute affirmation of human life and rights, the mishna attributed to Rabbi Akiva is once again emphasizing the responsibility that each human carries for their choices – reminding us that when we act with disregard for truth and justice, the consequences of our actions may spiral far beyond our comprehension.
But despite this general tendency of our sages to emphasize human responsibility over human rights on the basis of B’reishit 1:26-27, there are a few sources that conform better to Persico’s understanding of the Torah. D’varim 21:22 declares that the corpses of those executed by the court through stoning are hanged, while verse 23 prohibits leaving the hanged corpse up overnight with the justification “כי קללת אלקים תלוי” (“for he that is hanged is a curse of G-d”).
In the Mishna Sanhedrin 6:4, our sages explain that not all who are executed by stoning are hanged, but only those convicted of having blasphemed or worshiping idols.
While most commentaries explain the connection between HaShem’s curse and the hanged man in light of this mishna, since leaving the corpse hanging further publicizes the blasphemy or idolatry, Rashi takes a different approach. He explains that leaving the corpse hanging is a sign of disrespect to HaShem, “for man is made in His image and the Israelites are His children,” continuing with a parable of a king whose identical twin is hanged, leading the people to believe the king has been hanged.
The Siftei Ḥakhamim argues that Rashi’s explanation is only based on the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus that all who are stoned are hanged and not just blasphemers and idolaters – an opinion which is rejected by the majority of our sages. But even if this opinion is not ultimately codified as halakha, Rabbi Eliezer is one of the great sages of the Mishna, among the chief students of Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, and one of the teachers of Rabbi Akiva.
If, according to Rashi, he is making an argument for a basic principle of human dignity on the basis of man’s creation in the Divine image, Persico might have a basis for his claim.
The Maharal explains in the Gur Aryeh that while it’s absurd to apply Rashi’s parable to HaShem directly, since it’s a human corpse hanging, people might confuse the Divine image in which man was created (unique faculties such as intellect and dominion) and his physical form, leading them to mistakenly attribute human fallibility and ephemerality to the divine image rather than to the limited material reality of the human body.
This misunderstanding is at the core of the debate between Persico and the liberal school that he represents on the one hand, and the more tribalist traditional school that he challenges one the other, with Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich (Religious Zionism)) and Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) serving as Persico’s interlocutors.
In a meeting with Christian professors from the United States arranged by the Jewish Agency, HaRav Zvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook once explained that the “fault” that Jews find in Christianity is their blurring of the boundaries between Creator and created, between G-d and man.
In a censored passage from the Talmud, Sanhedrin 43b, our sages explain that the man who the Christians turned into a god was hanged (after being stoned, as explained above). The aforementioned mishna explains that “hanging” involves forming a T-shaped structure with a pair of wooden beams and hanging the corpse on the crossbeam by his hands, which bears a striking resemblance to the Roman method of crucifixion.
So when Rashi and the Maharal are discussing the theological dangers of leaving a hanged man hanging overnight, they’re not speaking abstractly. They know that the public, when whipped into false-messianic frenzy by the sorcery and incitement of a yeshiva student turned charlatan, is prone to such egregious errors in its understanding of the relation between Creator and creation. They’re fully aware that the linchpin of Christian theology is a bastardization of Hebrew texts regarding the Divine image of man, and that this theology leads to the abandonment of practical responsibility, in the form of mitzvot, in favor of sweeping generalizations that may sound nice in principle but cannot uphold a society.
The false lip-service morality of the Church, embodied in the Sermon on the Mount, abrogates the Divine law of the Torah, replacing it with idealistic platitudes such as poking out one’s eyes to avoid immoral sexual thoughts, equating divorce with adultery, writing off all forms of oaths, and – most famously – turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies. And the Jews who were swept up by this rhetoric turned a blind eye to the robust corpus of living Jewish law that had been intentionally weakened and corrupted by the same foreign occupation that the false messiah called to respect with his admonition, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to god what is god’s.”
So, no. The representatives of Israel’s national-religious camp aren’t wrong when they attribute sweeping statements about “human rights” based in the Divine image as foreign and Christian. While Persico is correct in his claim that dismissing all humanist ideals as foreign to Jewish values betrays a shallow understanding of Israel’s Torah, by anchoring these values in the creation of Adam he follows Christian theology and distances his argument from our tradition.
Many of the basic moral precepts commanded in the Torah, such as protecting orphans and widows, not oppressing outsiders, treating servants fairly, using accurate weights and measures, and “walking uprightly” are justified in the Torah with the words, “For I am HaShem who took you out of Egypt,” or a similar invocation of the Exodus.
In The Kuzari, Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi explains that grounding Jewish belief and practice in the Exodus – a national historical event – and not in the creation or “prehistory,” the Torah becomes a living reality rather than a theoretical platonic ideal. This same distinction marks the difference between halakha – the practical legal framework for Israel’s national life – and the distant unattainable ideal of Christian morality.
Persico should continue exploring the Jewish roots of the humanist tradition and Israel’s contribution to the world’s moral growth. But he shouldn’t take for granted that everything his liberal peers call “Judeo-Christian” is an authentic expression of our Torah.
Conversely, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir (and the public they represent) should strengthen their advocacy for infusing Israeli state policies with Torah values, not just when it comfortably conforms to their narrow nationalist agendas, but also when it challenges those conceptions with more universal and humanist ideals that make up our people’s moral imperatives.
Uplifting all of humanity with those imperatives is the central reason Israel was liberated from Egypt, and so long as we avoid giving these values their proper expression in the contemporary Jewish state, our national renaissance remain incomplete.
