Plenary, 22 Apr 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Official Report 328KB pdf

---

Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. Welcome back from the Easter recess. The first item of business this afternoon, as always, is time for reflection. I am pleased to say that our time for reflection leader is Rabbi Mendel Jacobs from Newton Mearns in Glasgow.

Man was given the power to conquer the whole world and to rule over it. Our sages teach that when God created Adam, his soul—his divine image—permeated his whole being, by virtue of which he became ruler over the entire creation. All the creatures gathered to serve him and to crown him as their creator, but Adam, pointing out their error, said to them, "Let us all come and worship God our maker!"

The world conquest given to man as his task and mission in life was to elevate and refine the whole of nature, including the beasts and animals, to the service of true humanity—humanity permeated and illuminated by the divine image, the soul, which is a part of God above—so that the whole of creation will realise that God is our maker.

Needless to say, before a man sets out to conquer the world, he must conquer himself and his ego, through the subjugation of the earthly and beastly in his nature. That is attained through actions that accord with the directives of the Torah—the scroll of the law or Old Testament, which is the practical guide to everyday living—so that the material becomes permeated and illuminated by the light of the one God. Herein lies the profound yet clear directive that each and every person is potentially capable of conquering the world. If a person does not fulfil that task and does not utilise their divine powers, it is not merely a personal loss and failure, but something that affects the destiny of the whole world.

One of the main distinguishing features of the creation of man is that man was created as a single being—unlike all other species, which were created in large numbers. That indicates emphatically that one individual has the capacity to bring the whole of creation to fulfilment. The rabbis teach us that Adam was the prototype and example for every individual who was to follow:

"For this reason was man created single, in order to teach us that ‘one person is equivalent to an entire world'".

That means that every human being, regardless of time, place and personal status, has the fullest capacity—and the duty—to rise and attain the highest degree of fulfilment and to accomplish the same for creation as a whole.