Ecology In The Divine Image

In the opening chapters of Bereisheet/Genesis, God famously creates humanity b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. For millennia Jews (and Christians) have been debating what that means. The word tzelem referred to an image of statue used in non-Jewish Temples, and Umberto Cassuto (1883–1951) argued from this that the writer was trying to imply that for Jews, worshiping God means serving other people. Certainly the concept of the divine…