(27) And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
לפיכך נברא אדם יחידי, ללמדך, שכל המאבד נפש אחת מישראל, מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו אבד עולם מלא. וכל המקים נפש אחת מישראל, מעלה עליו הכתוב כאלו קים עולם מלא.
It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam], to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.
(22) And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree; (23) his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt surely bury him the same day; for he that is hanged is a reproach unto God; that thou defile not thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.
תלמוד ירושלמי נדרים פרק ט: הל' ד
/ה"ד/
ואהבת לרעך כמוך ר' עקיבה או' זהו כלל גדול בתורה בן עזאי אומ' זה ספר תולדות אדם זה כלל גדול מזה .
Jerusalem Talmud Nedarim 9:4
Rabbi Akiva taught: “Love your neighbor as
yourself” (Leviticus 19). This is the major principle of the Torah. Ben Azzai says “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him” (Genesis 5:1). This is an even greater principle.
אבות דרבי נתן נוסחא ב פרק ל
וכל מעשיך יהיו לשם שמים כהלל. כשהיה הלל יוצא למקום היו אומרים לו להיכן אתה הולך. לעשות מצוה אני הולך. מה מצוה הלל. לבית הכסא אני הולך. וכי מצוה היא זו. אמר להן הן. בשביל שלא יתקלקל הגוף. איכן אתה הולך הלל. לעשות מצוה אני הולך מה מצוה הלל.
לבית המרחץ אני הולך. וכי מצוה היא זו. אמר להן הן. בשביל לנקות את הגוף. תדע לך שהוא כן מה אם אוקיינות העומדות בפלטיות של מלכים הממונה עליהם
להיות שפן וממרקן המלכות מעלה לו סלירא בכל שנה ושנה ולא עוד אלא שהוא מתגדל עם גדולי המלכות. אנו
שנבראנו בצלם ודמות שנאמר כי בצלם אלקים עשה את האדם (בראשית ט' ו') על אחת כמה וכמה.
Avot D’Rabbi Natan, Version 2, Chapter
30
And all your actions should be for the sake of Heaven, like Hillel. When Hillel left for a place, they would ask him, “where are you going?”
- “I am going to do a mitzvah.”
- “What is the mitzvah?”
- “I am going to the bathroom.”
- “And is this a mitzvah?”
- “Yes, so that the body is not damaged.”
Or:
- “I am going to the bathhouse.”
- “And is this a mitzvah?”
- “Yes, in order to clean the body. Know that if someone is appointed to polish and clean the statues of kings they are paid every year, and also respected among the great kings. So we, who are created in the image of God, how much more so?"
From “What Orthodoxy Can Gain from Academic Biblical Studies: The Torah as
Political Theory,” by Joshua Berman
In ways that were astonishingly new and counter-intuitive, in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah may be seen to rise like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: all men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplaceof egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint found in the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics and economics…The theological breakthrough of the Hebrew Torah is the transformation of the status and standing of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the elimination of nobles, royalty, and the like.
In the Torah, the common man received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.
The Unanimous Declaration of 13 United States of America, July 4, 1776
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.