Super Man or God’s Likeness
October 14, 2004

My original intention was to speak about Noah this morning. Noah is the main protagonist of today’s torah reading and whenever possible, I like to use the torah portion to teach important lessons for our times. However, Monday morning, when I sat down to write my sermon, I learned of the death of Christopher Reeve. News of his death in of itself might not have changed my mind about my sermon topic. However when I heard quoted the words that Dana, his wife, said to him after his tragic accident, I decided I had something important to say to you this morning about Christopher Reeve.
The character that Christopher Reeve made famous is superman. Superman is strong, he is powerful, he is heroic and in the person of Christopher Reeve, he is also handsome. Superman is a fantasy but one with personal allure for many of us which may explain why this film is the tenth highest grossing movie ever.

We live in a society where striving to be a super man or a super woman is a common goal. We use the gym to build up our bodies, we seek out plastic surgeons to do nips and tucks, we pursue diets, we acquire extensive and expensive wardrobes – all toward the goal of looking super. Morally, there is nothing wrong with this. It becomes problematic only when we start thinking that attaining a super image is what life is about. It becomes an issue for me as a religious leader only when I see it recasting our values. Regrettably, I witness that quite often. I see so many of us worrying far more about our exterior appearance than about what really counts – our interior.

Going back to the torah for a moment, last week we read that human beings are created in God’s likeness. Each of us should try to internalize that concept. To my mind that is an image worth striving for. Let me tell you what happened last week in the synagogue when we read that idea from the torah. We didn’t have a bar or bat mitzvah so I had both the time and the opportunity to engage the young people present in conversation. And I said to them, since all of us have a different look, how can we all be an image of God? How can God look like you if God looks like me? One of the students answered, “We don’t look like God physically, but we can be like God in the way we act.”

That young man has the makings of a rabbi. He was right. The meaning of being created in God’s image -b’zelem elohim - is that we have the ability to be God-like – not physically, but morally, through our actions. This very point is made in a beautiful midrash that instructs us: “As God visited Abraham when he was sick, so shall you who are created in God’s image visit the sick. As God buried Moses so shall you attend to the dead. As God comforts the mourners, you comfort the mourners. As God made coats out of skin to clothe Adam and Eve, so shall you who are created in God’s image clothe the naked.”

The very last statement in that midrash about clothing the naked brings to mind a story I told several years ago on Rosh Hashanah. Perhaps you remember it.

A little boy about 10 years old was standing barefoot, peering through the window of a shoe store. He was shivering with cold. A woman who noticed him there approached him and asked, “what are you staring at so earnestly?”

“I was staring at a pair of shoes in the window,” was the boy’s response, “and I was asking God to give me a pair.”

The women took lad by the hand and led him into the store. Then she asked the clerk to get socks for the him. As the clerk was getting them, she went into the rest room, put soap and water on paper towels and washed and dried his feet. When the clerk returned with the socks, she placed them on the young man. Then she had him try on the shoes he was admiring. Seeing that they fit, she purchased them for the youth. She patted him on the head and said, “Now you must feel more comfortable.”

As she was about to go, the astonished lad took her by the hand and looking up at her with tears in his eyes asked, “Are you God’s wife?”

When we act like that woman did in helping a fellow human being, we are not God’s wife or husband but we are like God. Judaism teaches us that what life is about is not being super man or super woman. Our task in life is to cultivate those qualities and behaviors that make us like God: caring toward others, being concerned with justice, extending our love. And that brings me to what Christopher Reeve’s wife, Dana, said to him after his accident. Christopher Reeve was despondent. He was at his lowest point. He saw no hope of ever being able to do anything useful again, anything creative or joyful. He looked ahead and saw himself being a perpetual burden to his wife and his children, so he said to Dana, why don’t I just end it all. She quickly responded, please don’t. “I love you for who you are and you are still that same person.”

What a profound and beautiful thing to say to her husband. Her words assured him that she was not in love with superman; she was in love with Christopher Reeve. She wasn’t in love with an image. Undeniably, before the accident, he was a handsome and talented actor, an athletic sportsman, a man who when he walked down the street, every one turned to look at and admire. But that wasn’t why she married him. She married him because he was her soul mate who despite his physical incapacity now was still a wonderful soul.

We spend so much time cultivating our exterior, how we appear superficially. But what really counts is who we are at a our core: our moral values, our ability to love, our capacity for compassion and caring. All true love is the love of soul mates. And that love survives the diminution of beauty, the loss of health, the changes brought on by old age. My mother loved my father even when he was 93, frail, with failing memory.

What our society values today is image - that of a youthful, powerful, handsome idol – like what Christopher Reeve once was. But the lesson he taught us is that superman was a facade. His true image – till his dying day – was tzelem elohim – the image of God. When he was no longer super man, we saw this most clearly. We saw his compassion and his passion for helping others who suffered from disability as he did. We witnessed his courage and fortitude in the face of despair. We witnessed his love of life and his love for his family. These are not qualities that are created in the plastic surgeon’s office or developed in the gym. They are the potential deep within ourselves that only we and our faith can foster.

May Christopher Reeve’s life be an enduring lesson for us that what is most in need of our nurturing is not how we look on the outside, but how we can be strong, hopeful, loving, caring and faithful on the inside – at our core.

Shabbat Shalom