“ALMOST THE FIRST THING THE BIBLE TELLS US ABOUT *ADAM IS THAT he was created in the “image of God” (Genesis 1:27). This description has confused more than a few people and been interpreted in widely disparate ways...Jewish teachings hold, however, that God is incorporeal, without a body (see Deuteronomy 4:12, 15).

In what sense then are human beings understood to be made “in God’s image”? Unlike animals, they have the ability to reason and to know good from evil. People speak, for example, of a “good” dog, but all they mean is an obedient dog. A dog trained by anti-Nazi partisans to attack Nazis was no more a “good” dog than a dog trained by the Nazis to attack Jews in a concentration camp was “bad.” Animals do not have the reasoning ability to make moral choices; human beings are the only creatures who do. It is in this regard that human beings are considered to be “in God’s image.”

...Because it believes that each human being is created *in God’s image, the Torah regards every person as possessing infinite, and individual, value.

...*Adam and Eve [were] the first human beings created *in God’s image,
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