The Sweetness of Strength

I
n a world of obscurity and falsehood, where do we find Hashem?

Iyov (19:26) offers a suggestion: “mibsari echezeh Eloka — from my flesh I shall see G-d.” The usual understanding of this verse is that the wonders of the human body attest to the existence of a Creator.

But there’s another meaning in Iyov’s assertion. Since man was created in the image of Hashem, his physical structure reveals information about the attributes of His Creator. This is true despite the fact that Hashem has no physical form.

Torah sources tell us that the symmetry of the human body, its right and left sides, indicate that there are two opposite, yet complementary middos with which Hashem governs the world: chesed, kindness, and gevurah, strength. In Kabbalistic writings, chesed, the primary and dominant middah, is associated with the right hand, while gevurah, the secondary attribute, is associated with the left hand.