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Rosh Hashanah: Celebrating the Creation of the Individual or the Community?
God creates “the human... male and female” (Genesis 1), seemingly describing the first human couple. But a look at how the other species are created in the same chapter suggests otherwise.
Published: August 30, 2013
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Last Updated: October 28, 2026
The phrase is used in Jeremiah 20:17 in the sense of “an eternal pregnancy.”
See James Barr, “Adam: Single Man, or All Humanity?” J. Magness and S. Gitin (eds.),Hesed Ve-Emet: Studies in Honor of Ernest S. Frerichs (Brown Judaic Series 320; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), pp. 3-12; idem, “One Man, or All Humanity?” A. Brenner and J. W. Ven Henten (eds.), Recycling Biblical Figures (Studies in Theology and Religion 1; Leiden: Deo, 1999), pp. 3-21.
I say this despite the midrash from b. Sanhedrin 67b cited by Rashi that indeed understood that at first a giant frog emerged, which only subsequently broke up into millions of little frogs.
This is true of Yom Kippur as well, as can be seen from the Yom Kippur confessions, which are all written in the plural.
