Tikkun Leil Shavuot: Betzelem Elokim Creativity and Responsibility

R. Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man p109

This is why he was so taken by Maimonides approach to teshuva and the agency that it expresses about the human capacity for transformation.

Rambam, Hilchot Teshuvah, Chapter 5:2

Do not even consider what the silly people of the nations and most of the dull-minded of Israel say, that the Holy One, Blessed Be, decrees upon each person at the time of birth whether he or she will be good or bad. This is not so - every person has the potential to be as righteous as Moses our Teacher, or as wicked as Jeroboam, clever or stupid, merciful or cruel, misery or noble, or indeed to possess any of the other temperaments. Nobody can force one, decree upon one, or lead one into one of the ways, but one should choose a way out of one's own free will. Jeremiah said, "Does not both good and evil come from the mouth of the most high?", i.e. that the Creator does not decree upon a person whether he or she will be good or bad. Nevertheless, a sinner damages himself or herself, and it is therefore fitting for him/her to cry and eulogize on account of sins and on what has been done to his soul by wrapping it with evil. Jeremiah further said, "Why then does a living person complain, a person for the punishment of his or her sins?". By this he means that since it is in our own free will to do evil, it is [also] fitting for us to return in repentance and to leave our evils, for this is also in our free wills. He further said, "Let us search and try our ways, and turn back to the Lord".

Constantly recreating ourselves and also using our brilliant minds to attend to the challenges of the world.

We are created in the image of God, the ultimate creator. The process of being intelligent involves creating new concepts. The ability to create new, exact responses maybe defined as human intelligence.

The recognition of each moment being a new moment and capacity to make new choices from full range of possibilities

Harvey Jackins

With more understanding the day can come when every act at our hand will be a creative one, in the finest sense, and man and women will rejoice in each other’s accomplishments from minute to minute.

In fact a full reclamation of this principle will mean the end to war and vast reduction of suffering and the rational distribution of the world’s resources among its peoples.

This brilliance in ourselves calls upon us to recognise the brilliance in another, or at least to acknowledge the honour of humanity- kavod habriyot- and the demands that that honour makes upon, even Torah laws. (Question about whether tzelem actually has halakhot attached to it- the only mitzvah is peru urvu in that pasuk, even parsha)

Rabbinic sources of kavod habriyot- meta-halakhic cateogory, halakhic value

(importance because all laws filter through these categories)

The implications that being made in the divine image has for how humans treat each other?

How we act (like God) but how we treat another (who is also God) both of those are about the other person- because we can be mohel on our own honour

Hope that we can be more humane to each other.

Explanations of its greatness- even though it is not a mitzvah it can override mitzvoth

And also- it is so great that the divine was prepared to be mohel/ to surrender on divine honour in its place.

Rashi explains according to the gemara there that when it says it overrides a negative commandment of the Torah it refers to lo tasur- do not stray from their words right or left- which is why it refers to overriding rabbinic commandments (because the rabbis instilled on their words d’oraita severity but also the capacity to reinterpret and override this severity)

Sort out different situations:

Examples of people going to do pesach offering, circumscise their son and if they hear someone has died and if the are a met mitzvah- they need someone to bury them- Rashi explains this is something that is kavod habriyot and pushes off something d’oraita

This shev ve’al taaseh (not doing something) is to be differentiated from actually having to do something forbidden. As Rashi explains: There are many things that have been permitted to uproot something from the Torah (la’akor dvar Torah) as a precaution and because of kavod habriyot but this is not a case where something is actually uprooted with an action but rather the person is inactive and the dvar Torah is thereby uprooted like blowing the shofar and lulav but someone who actually uproots it with their actions, this is not on. Like someone who wears kilayim…big warning about that.

Classic case is being able to transgress carrying laws (d’oraita) for this principle- taking stones – old fashioned toilet paper- in to a private space to avoid humiliation.

If someone will see someone else (as in Tosefta) but for oneself one is obligated to forego one’s own honour in order that the honour of the divine should not be desecrated

An excess of honour- we are treating other people as if their honour is transcendent and our own as if it is not.

An exception is in the case of hashavat aveida where a person does not have to return something that is beneath her honour because there is no obligation to humiliate yourself for the money or possessions of your fellow (although there is for your person)

We learn also from burying the dead (kvurat hamet), comforting the mourners (nihum aveilim), visiting the sick (bikur holim) and preparing the bride (hachnasat callah) and making her happy (meseach callah) : these are the things that are not beneath anyone’s honour.

(hashem visiting Abraham after his milah)

Coming back to the idea of caring and seeing the other as divine as something that completes us: