60 | OCTOBER 12 • 2023 J
N
T
here are words that
change the world, none
more so than two sen-
tences that appear in the first
chapter of the Torah: “Then
God said, ‘Let us make man-
kind in our image, in our like-
ness, so that they may rule over
the fish in the sea and the birds
in the sky, over the livestock and
all the wild animals, and over
all the creatures
that move along
the ground.
’ So
God created man-
kind in His own
image, in the
image of God
He created them;
male and female
He created them.
” Gen. 1:26-27
The idea set forth here is per-
haps the most transformative in
the entire history of moral and
political thought. It is the basis
of the civilization of the West
with its unique emphasis on the
individual and on equality. It lies
behind Thomas Jefferson’s words
in the American Declaration of
Independence, “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all
men are created equal [and] are
endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights …
”
These truths are any-
thing but self-evident. They
would have been regarded
as absurd by Plato, who held
that society should be based
on the myth that humans are
divided into people of gold,
silver and bronze and it is this
that determines their status in
society. Aristotle believed that
some are born to rule and others
to be ruled.
Revolutionary utterances
do not work their magic over-
night. As Rambam explained
in The Guide for the Perplexed,
it takes people a long time to
change. The Torah functions
in the medium of time. It did
not abolish slavery, but it set in
motion a series of developments
— most notably Shabbat, when
all hierarchies of power were
suspended and slaves had a day
a week of freedom — that were
bound to lead to its abolition in
the course of time.
People are slow to under-
stand the implications of ideas.
Thomas Jefferson, champion
of equality, was a slave-owner.
Slavery was not abolished in the
United States until the 1860s
and not without a civil war. And
as Abraham Lincoln pointed
out, slavery’s defenders as well as
its critics cited the Bible in their
cause. But eventually people
change, and they do so because
of the power of ideas planted
long ago in the Western mind.
A NEW WAY OF THINKING
What exactly is being said in the
first chapter of the Torah?
The first thing to note is that
it is not a stand-alone utterance,
an account without a context.
It is, in fact, a polemic, a pro-
test, against a certain way of
understanding the universe. In
all ancient myth the world was
explained in terms of battles of
the gods in their struggle for
dominance. The Torah dismiss-
es this way of thinking totally
and utterly. God speaks and the
universe comes into being. This,
according to the great 19th-
century sociologist Max Weber,
was the end of myth and the
birth of Western rationalism.
More significantly, it created
a new way of thinking about
the universe. Central to both
the ancient world of myth and
the modern world of science is
the idea of power, force, ener-
gy. That is what is significantly
absent from Genesis 1. God
says, “Let there be,
” and there
is. There is nothing here about
power, resistance, conquest
or the play of forces. Instead,
the key word of the narrative,
appearing seven times, is utterly
unexpected. It is the word tov,
good.
Tov is a moral word. The
Torah in Genesis 1 is telling
us something radical. The
reality to which Torah is a
guide (the word “Torah” itself
means guide, instruction, law)
is moral and ethical. The ques-
tion Genesis seeks to answer is
not “How did the universe come
into being?” but “How then shall
we live?” This is the Torah’s most
significant paradigm-shift.
The universe that God
made and we inhabit is not
about power or dominance
but about tov and ra, good and
evil. For the first time, religion
was ethicized. God cares about
justice, compassion, faithfulness,
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
The Genesis of Justice