JBFCS: Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs

Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs of the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services

July 2008

Texts Related to Community and Tzelem Elohim

In this month’s issue of Jewish Community Services and Resources, our monthly e-newsletter, we shared with you our efforts to make our programs and services more welcoming to Jews of Color. Here, we share with you some texts related to community and being created in G-d’s image, as we strive to build community in G-d’s image as a part of this initiative.

Human was created as a single individual
to teach you that anyone who destroys a single soul
is as though he destroyed an entire world,
and anyone who preserves a single soul
is as though he preserved an entire world;
and to preserve peace/harmony among creatures,
so that one person not say to the next,
"my father is greater than your father,"
or as some might say,
"there are multiple powers in heaven."
And to show the greatness of the Holy Blessed One,
for while a person stamps many coins from a single mold,
and all that are produced come out alike,
the King of Kings, the Holy Blessed One,
has stamped every person with the mold of the first Adam,
yet not one of them is like his fellow.
And so, each and every individual is obligated to say,
"For my sake was the world created..."
— Mishnah Sanhedrin, 4:5

When God resolved to create Adam, the father of the human race, he took the dust from which man was made, not from Palestine, mark you, the land of the Jew; not from Jerusalem, the Holy City; not from Zion, the site of the Holy Temple; but He took a little earth from every corner of the globe, from East and West, from North and South. Why? The Rabbis answered: "So that in the future no nation shall say, from my earth was Adam created; so that no people may say, we are greater, we are worthier than our neighbor, for Adam had his birth here."
— Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38a

None of us has solid ground under his feet; each of us is only held up by the neighborly hands holding him by the scruff, with the result that we are each held up by the next man, and often, indeed most of the time, hold each other up mutually…
— Franz Rosenzweig, 1886-1929

If we look long enough and hard enough... we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize these connections, we will begin to change the world.
— Muriel Rukeyser in Writing beyond the Ending by Rachel B. du Plessis, 1995

A Jew’s identity is rooted in community.
— Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum in The Journey Home by Joyce Antler, 1997

These "Spirituality Notes" are excerpts from our monthly E-newsletter. Articles are © JBFCS Rita J. Kaplan Jewish Connections Programs and may be reprinted free of charge as long as this credit line is included.

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