Rediscovering the Divine Image Within

There is a popular Midrash where the heavenly angels object to God giving the Torah to Moses, thus it says, “The Torah is too holy to be given to mortals who will not appreciate it and revere it. Let the Torah remain here, among us.” You see the angels themselves made their comments because they had skin in the game if you will as it says in Genesis; “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness.”  They too (meaning the angles) were invested in the creation of humankind; after all, they had a reputation to maintain and the last thing they wanted was people messing up a good thing.  Looking to the teaching of my Rabbi and Teacher from Los Angeles, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, he tells a story based on this Midrash that I would like to expand a bit.

The giving of the Torah, a special gift that comes from God, actually took a back seat to a bigger issue for the Angels; people were to be created in the divine image. For the Angels that meant; people will think as God thinks, [people] feel as God feels, and [people] create as God creates.  Yet since people are flawed, the Angels also reasoned, if God rules so too people will rule, but instead of doing so with benevolence and justice, they possibility will rule in tyranny and egotism, traits that people have ascribed to God, traits that we see around us in the world today both here and abroad, traits that we have personally encountered in our own lives, let alone we may have perpetrated ourselves at one time or another.  The Angels went on to further say that Human beings will feel that they have the right to be worshipped, although we might call it admired or respected, perhaps they will think they have a false dominion over creation only to destroy the world which God has created, let alone abuse the divine image – using it to hurt others as well as themselves.  The Angels therefore decided; “we cannot let that happen.”  The Angels clearly felt that people were spiritually bankrupt, not capable of appreciating the value of the Torah let alone being representatives of the divine image in the world.

As the Angels gathered to discuss their concerns they agreed that they needed to hide the divine image so humans could not find it.  One angel said “lets hide it on top of the mountain,” to which another responded, “but when they learn how to climb mountains they will find it.”  Another Angel said, “Let’s put it at the bottom of the sea,” to which an Angel said, “one day they will find a way to plumb the bottom of the seas so that will not work either.”  Finally, yet another Angel suggested, “let’s place it in the depth of the farthest forest,” yet another Angel retorted, “No, one day they will learn to transverse the wilderness and find it there as well.”

After rejecting other suggestions they came to an agreement and presented it to God.  The Angels said to God that they we would like to put the divine image deep within the human heart and deep within the human soul, places they thought people would never think to look!   After a moment of consideration God agreed and it was so: the divine image would be embedded deep within our humanity, making it available but harder to discover.

The Angles understood the following. Life would get in the way, the toil of life and the disappointments that come with it; the veneer of hardness and disillusionment, hopelessness and distain, hurt and the human response, the flawed human ego and sense of self-sustainment and preservation as well as the power of anger and fear to have a hand in helping mold human character, all like layers of an onion, the Angels sadly knew that such things would affect the human heart and further hide the divine image from people who might to try to look for it.

You see in order to grasp the divine image within where the human middot (soul character traits) will reflect love and mercy, graciousness and compassion, justice and forgiveness, truth, kindness and the like within a person, negative traits must be conquered first in order to be shaped by the purity of the divine image itself; something that seemingly gets harder as the years go by, although not impossible to reverse.  The Angels wanted to make the divine image something people could make their own, but they did not want it to be easy to find either on account of those who might miss use and/or disrespect it.

God wanted to make sure that each and every person would have the opportunity to find the divine image within so a plan was made called the Yamim Nora’im, the days of Awe.  The beginning of the Yamim Nora’im is when the gates of heaven open at Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur will close again till next year per Jewish tradition.  God reasoned, well, the Angels have a good complaint against humanity, but I want to have a solution, so I will give people a 10 day period to do what they normally do not do during the rest of the year, and that is to look for the divine image within.

The divine image would remind those who sought after it of life’s possibilities and the hopes that are before them, to be reminded of their better selves, not allowing the imperfections found in the world to interfere with the light that shines inside, for self and others, allowing goodness and kindness to no longer be the prisoner that it has become.  On Yom Kippur T’shuvah (return) is needed, not only to find the divine image within, but also to return to how it was intended to be used, emulating God’s image in the way people think, feel and create, let alone have dominion over the creation, receiving and giving love to others, passing those values to the next generation and the ones that will follow after that.

I think it is too easy to see Yom Kippur as a day we stand before God and get judged for our sins, hoping that we are forgiven and have another year ahead of us (for some in might cause more fear).  Well, we do stand before God and we are judged for how we have used the divine image within, connecting us to a Holy God, which is true, but there is more.  The Holiday prayers remind us that life and death happen and we just might not make it to next year, which is the reality of the human condition, “a time to be born and a time to die.”  So when we say the Shehecheyanu, we are reminded that we are fortunate to reach this special time and season to have yet another opportunity to find and respond to the divine image within that helps us become the people we want to be.

The message of Yom Kippur: return to the better self,  because good human life cannot grow in the soil of brokenness, hurt, anger or un-forgiveness. We must therefore return to the soil of the divine image within, our holy spark that produces the traits of love, a desire to heal, repair, and the embrace of life that will shine its light where it is needed.  This might sound like a big task, but until you and I leave this earth this is part of our purpose.  Yeah there are a lot of places to begin with, family, friends and acquaintances, but it begins with ourselves and that is what Yom Kippur wants to remind us of. 

Gmar Chatima Tovah, May you be Sealed in the Book of Life!

Rabbi Adam