Winter 1984 - 1985 - Quarterly Review

HOMILETICAL RESOURCES
capital punishment nearly impossible. Behind this process, however,
stood the rabbinic sense of respect for God's image and the deeply felt
notion that spilling blood meant its diminution. That being settled,
many rabbis recognized that they had to limit bloodshed whether
inflicted by vicious criminals or by the court. It is not surprising that
Akiba, who said, "Beloved is humankind because it has been created
in the Divine Image" (Abot 3:14), is foremost in his opposition to
capital punishment.
The development of ethical meaning for "You shall not murder" did
not stop at the point of special regard for human life that we have
seen. Rather the tradition moves on to consider the emotional and
spiritual core of human life as an issue no less significant than the
physical life of a person. Thus the Talmud rules, "Anyone who
embarrasses one's fellow in public is as one who sheds blood" (B.
Mezi c a, 58a). R. Nahman b. Isaac commented, "What has been said is
well said, for we have seen that the face of the embarrassed party
blanches." Hence, the act is considered a form of bloodshed.
At a more philosophical level, however, the act of denigrating and
embarrassing another shares with murder the characteristic of defacing and
rninimizing the divine image. If one considered the true value of each
person granted by his or her creation in God's image, one would perforce
have to refrain from belittling one's fellow. As a hassidic bon mot puts it,
"Which is greater, a sin against God or a sin against man? Certainly a sin
against man, for that is a sin against the Divine Image as well!"
Other Jewish folk traditions realize the notion of the divine image in
Jewish life. In counting toward the quorum of ten needed for communal
prayer, the traditional practice is to use the ten Hebrew words of Ps. 28:9
for the count. Eastern European Jews can be heard to count people using
the Yiddishism "nisht eins," "not one." These circumlocutions indicate
the deep-seated unwillingness to reduce a human being created in God's
image to a number. It is this ethic which impels the "holy society" which
buries the dead to address even a corpse wth a plea for forgiveness if,
perchance, the preparations for burial have been done without
appropriate sensitivity toward the dignity and privacy due a human
being. In death, as in life, a person remains what he or she was, the
dwelling place of God's image which endures forever.
This is the ethical sensitivity which characterizes the best in Jewish
traditional thought. It is a sensitivity desperately needed in an era when
the value of each person is questioned and frequently eroded by
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