with words,
the Holy One created the world,
but through God’s hands,
the Holy One created us.
holiness spilling forth,
beyond the containers
of letters and words,
from God’s hands
to our bodies.
a light that penetrates deep.
a light that stays with us,
within us,
a light that cannot be diminished,
even by the momentary flash
of God’s own anger.
July 13, 1940
In Parshat Beresheit, the first chapters of Genesis, on the verse (Genesis 1:27) “God created man in His image,” Rashi explains: “Everything else was created at God’s verbal command, while man was brought into existence at God’s hand.”
We already have pondered the meaning of this teaching, for to create with speech seems to be a higher form of creation than to create by hand. How is it that everything else was created at God’s command, while man, who is higher than everything, was created by His hand? As we have explained, the holiness from above does not enter into the essence of the rest of creation but remains in the words of God’s verbal command. With the Jew, however, the holiness reaches into his every action. He is created, so to speak, at the very hands of God, and he is essentially and entirely holy.
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