Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “The special quality of the human being.”

The creation of man is the creation of a lump of clay in which the living spirit is given.

But both of them are important.

The clay and the spirit.

If I try to deny one of them, I am destroying what I call the divine structure, and, the divine structure tells me its peak is humanity.

That is what He says is His image: the creature that is at least in some way resembling Him is a creature that is both spirit and matter.

The other creatures are either/or, they are what I call partial creations.

There are spiritual creations and material creations.

Humanity, which is the combination, has this distinctiveness, so if you lose one part you lose the special quality of the human being.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz