'In the image of God': theology, relationships and social justice

My book, Judaism, Education and Social Justice, is coming out in paperback in May. If you like the sound of a challenging, academic, philosophical read about faith, education and progressive politics, this is the book for you. It’s available here with a 20% discount if you pre-order – use code GLR AT5.

Here’s today’s extract. If it whets your appetite, please be in touch (I’d love to discuss!) and share with friends and colleagues.

Student rabbi Rachel* articulates her commitment to social justice based on covenantal relationships in theological terms:

That is for me the verse that sums it up: that it’s about me being made in the divine image. And through that, kind of linking it back to again being in relationships with each other, is that you should love your stranger as yourself, is because you know what it’s like to be a stranger, yad’a [‘knew’], you’re in a relationship with the stranger. You know what it is to be that person.

Rachel refers to the well-known image of Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Martin Luther King at Selma and to Heschel’s statement that he was ‘praying with his feet’. For her, this connotes

a sacred duty to do social justice. It kind of almost like makes it feel too small saying social justice … but being there for people, being with each other, and … acting for each other. Being with, holding them, or whatever it is. Like it’s sacred work, that relationship work. And social justice is part of that.

She expands on the conception of God that underlies this conviction:

Knowing God, or knowing the Divine, or the source of everything, or whatever it is, something higher, a higher power, is through relationships with people, and is being able to see the Divine in each other. … But for me knowing God is basically through relationships, and through getting to know the other, and being able to break down some of the boundaries.

When asked if God ‘is something beyond the human relationship, or is it in the human relationship?’ Rachel responds,

For me there’s something beyond it as well, like it taps into that bigger picture. … I don’t believe that … God is only in the immanent, or only in the relationship with the other person. I definitely think that there is something … My understanding of God is quite kabbalistic. … What really works for me is the divine sparks being lodged in everything, but yet there’s Ein Sof [literally ‘without end’ or ‘infinite’ – a traditional mystical appellation for the divine], like there’s the unknowable, you know, there’s no end. That big thing that we’re talking about, that God. So I have both of those in mind. But I feel like you access it through relationships.

*All names are pseudonyms.