And God created mankind in His image, in the image of God he created him; male and female in his image – Bereishit 1:27.

Two arms?  - Check.

Two Legs?  - Check.

 Slightly unruly mass of facial hair? - Check.

 Right, image of God, done,  lets go, another day starts. But wait, what about that dude with one arm on the tube? What about the 6 billion other people that don’t look like me . Am I really supposed to believe that Susan Boyle and Cheryl Cole are both constructed in the same image?

So clearly this is not a physical thing. It is not that we and God look similar. But what are we meant to learn from the first thing that the Torah tells us about humanity – that we are God-like?

One way to interpret that  is in the immediate context the torah puts it in “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the sky and over all the beasts that tread upon the earth." That roughley parses as ‘overpopulate and rule the world as I do, for you are like me, everything is your subject’ This is not exactly a message we eed reinforcing today, and it is also not a very responsible one.

The torah further expounds what it may mean to be made in the image of God. A few months down the line, in Deuteronomy, the torah tells us to “walk after the Lord your God” (Deut 13:5). If we take these two verses together, that we are made in the image of God, and must walk after Him, I think we arrive at quite an interesting idea. But I am not the only one who thinks so.

I’m going to let Rabbi Hama ben Rabbi Hanina explain it, as he said it first, and his words are recorded for posterity in the Talmud (in this case Sotah 14a): “It means to follow in the traits of the God – the holy one blessed be he: Just as God clothes the naked, so you shall clothe the naked. Just as God visits the sick so you shall visit the sick. Just as God comforts the bereaved, so you shall comfort the bereaved. Just as God buries the dead, so you shall bury the dead”.

What he means is that having been created in the image of God means that we have the ability to emulate Gods positive attributes, namely to to acts of tzedakah and “g’mulat chasidim” (acts of loving kindness). It gives us the ability to do the actions that are required of us to live good communal lives. It not only tells us to emulate the actions that are necessary to this ind of life, but it also reminds us that all are part of our wider community. That we are all made in the image of God. We all have feelings, we all have needs, and at times we may be on the recieving end of the kindness of others but through our communities we hope to be able to help others when the time comes.

By Adam Berkley

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