The Torah says God formed man from the dust of the earth. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 2:7) takes this one sentence and turns it into a cosmic geography.
"The Lord God created man in two formations," the Targumist writes, "and took dust from the place of the house of the sanctuary" — the future Temple Mount in Jerusalem — "and from the four winds of the world, and mixed from all the waters of the world, and created him red, black, and white."
Adam is not a local product. His body is gathered from the holiest patch of ground on earth and from every direction of the compass. Every race and every land is literally in him. When Judaism teaches that all human beings descend from one person so that no one can claim a purer lineage than another (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5), this is the source: Adam is made of everyone's dust.
The two formations of Adam
The phrase "in two formations" is deliberate. The rabbis read Adam as created with two drives — the yetzer ha-tov, the good inclination, and the yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination. Two formations, one person. The Targum loads this into the moment of creation. Adam is a walking tension from his first breath.
Then God breathed into his nostrils "the inspiration of life, and there was in the body of Adam the inspiration of a speaking spirit." Jewish tradition reads this as the soul — neshama. What distinguishes humanity from every other creature is not strength, not size, not skill. It is speech with God as its source.