MediumThinker: What do you think Rashi is doing here? What is he coming to reject? He is rejecting the Spanish/rationalist reading of the Passuk that has to split that Passuk in two to avoid a corporeal G-d. He says that you can’t split the Passuk. Ki B’tzelem Elokim Bara Es Ha’adam. What do you think Rashi means Tzelem means? It means form or shape. Look at Rashi Al Hatorah on Na’aseh Adam or somewhere around there. It’s a 2-word Rashi that says “B’tzalmeinu Kidmuseinu”. Rashi, as well as many of the French Rishonim, believed that you read the Pessukim literally and that G-d has a body. I wish I knew where in the Machzor Vitry this is brought down offhand, but I’ll find it and post it at some point. (Someone also told me that there’s a Rashi in D’varim that’s Mashma like this too, but I don’t recall what it is.)
I don’t see why you’re so strongly refusing to believe that Rashi could have held that. We know that other French Ge’onim at the time held that. So what would the Chiddush be in Rashi holding that? And who do you think the “Gedolim V’tovim” that the Ra’avad refers to are? R’ Moshe Taku? He’s talking about Rashi and some of the Ba’alei Hatosfos, who clearly did not see a problem with believing in the corporeality of HKBH.