Group or Individual? | Parshas Bo

this is a subtle joke the one-liner if you if you blink you miss it yeah that was it yeah it was over you know I could just skip it I got a laugh all right here you go no I always try to say a joke that should get us thinking in the right direction okay so I have a pretentious friend who says he's having an identity crisis who does he think he is yeah okay oh all right so subject today is identity specifically identity in terms of what little akhira here a little philosophical query into the nature of obviously when I speak about identity and you know in context of tyrona a class like this when we say identity what do we mean we mean Jewish identity of course so what is Jewish identity they're two ways of looking at Georgia identity one way is is there a people called the Jews and they are this people is made up of individuals or are there individual Jews which make up those people which is called the Jewish people in other words do the Jews make up the Jewish people or is the Jewish people made up of juice okay you're gonna say both okay and and that's generally the Jewish answer to any question is it is it a or is it B yes okay but the question is is there a particular way that we're supposed to look at it in other words maybe look and feel feel permitted for moment there are different types of societies in the world but in general we can talk about collectivist societies and individualistic societies there are collectivistic societies that that collectivism they they stain they emphasize your the society of the group of the whole and the individual is supposed to defer his or her personal fulfillment and goals for the greater good you know you have like a totalitarian society where it's very much you know the the agenda of the state and the individuals are there to serve the state and then you have let's say the exact opposite extreme you have Levitical very like libertarian society like like the United States especially today as its evolved where it's very much into individualistic identity individualistic rights and you know that were very much into the the state is here not to interfere with my personal fulfillment but to you know stay out of the way of that I mean that's at least the the political philosophy culturally speaking historically speaking of the United States that would be an individualistic society so the questions like this from a Torah perspective is Jewish identity collectivist or individualist okay so we're gonna go to the first miksa that the Jewish people performed which is in this week's pasha parshas bite partially takes place before the jews leave egypt and they are given actually the exodus itself happens within partials baby but the bulk of the parsha they have not yet left egypt and Moshe is given a commandment that the Jewish people are to bring a sacrifice a Pesach offering korban Pesach a lamb and that is the first mix for the Jewish people perform now just parenthetically is it the first Mitzvah it's not the first Mitzvah you could argue that ha kodesh has elohim that the mitzvah of this month meaning the month of redemption the month of Nisan shall be for you the first of months when Hashem told Misha to establish the new moon be in in in that month before they left Egypt that that was the first myths for the first mitzvah is to keep the calendar the lunar based calendar according to the clicker the purpose of establishing the lunar calendar at that time was only in order to be able to have a date on which to bring the pace of offering so really the first Mitzvah is the pace of offering and even establishing the calendar was just to be able to know when to do that but at the very least even if you say that the lunar calendar was the first mitzvah and competitor comes the second Mitzvah co-offensive has the first carbon the first offering for sacrifice the Jewish people brought and it is in that way also sort of archetypical a first and thus sets the tone for everything that comes after it and that's what we're gonna do we're gonna look at the Corbin Pesa as the first Mitzvah or at the very least the first offering that the Jewish people bring and from that we're going to try to understand if Jewish identity is primarily an emphasis on the collective or on the individual so far so good okay a little bit of background about carbonates about offerings we're not gonna get too technical a very basic level there are two types of offerings in general a carbon Yahud and a carbon Siebler an individual offering and a communal offering what's the difference maybe let's talk about communal offering first because communal offerings are constant there there's something called a tamid constant offering first carbon in the morning last carbon towards the evening is called the Talmud the constant offering that is brought on behalf of the entire Jewish people the funds were paid for from a flat tax which was collected from everyone equally there are other times when the rich give more the poor give less this was a flat tax half shekel and it's done on behalf of the entire Jewish people obviously the entire Jewish people are not present when the carbon is brought because that would just not be possible to have everyone there there were representatives of the Jewish people who would stand there when the carbon was but the point is the Tom made is an example of an offering that is brought on behalf of the entire nation I'll give you another example a moose off a most of offering is brought on behalf of the entire nation it's not it's not anybody's personal offering most of his brought it's the most of means additional it's the additional offering that's brought an Australian dish or on Shabbos or on Yom if that's a communal offering okay in contrast you have personal offers let's what's a personal offer okay so let's say you cross the ocean and you survived and you want to give thanks or you're obligated to give thanks a carbon toy the toda thank you Thanksgiving offering that's a personal offering you survive you're you're grateful you have to bring us a sacrifice too to show your gratitude okay well let's say Corbin Coty's you did a sin you want to make good you want to restore your relationship with a sham you bring your sin offering your equipment cantos that's an individual offering okay that distinction is clear now one practical difference practical difference is this whether or not that Corbin may be brought on a Shabbos or in a empty but the question of whether the Corbin pushes off the prohibitions of Malacca of Labor if you want to bring a personal offering it does not push off the prohibitions of Malacca of work on Travis and you are told bring it you know come back Sunday bring it another time a carbon seaboard a communal offering pushes off Shabbos in fact if a Corbin Seaver which is supposed to be given on Chavez is not given on Shabbos there's no makeup you have to do it on Chavez or you know the best examples is the Shabbos mussaf that's a that's a that's a carbon that specifically instituted to be brought on Shabbos right okay so the difference is an individual offering is not locked into a specific time so come back later you know it's sort of I'll give you an example that maybe we can relate to a little bit more because unfortunately we don't relate to the carbonize but a bris a bris pushes off jobs even though it entails Malaka certain labors that are in violation of Shabbos but the British us off the Shabbos because it's a mitzvah to give the bris however if it's not on time it's already not in time so then we push it off so think about it like that if it has to be done in a certain time so it pushes off shoppers if it doesn't have to be done in a certain time it doesn't korban your kid is you know it's just you come back another time but a Corbin Siebler is more affixed in its time and it doesn't push off Shabbos okay now with that background I'm gonna tell you a story there was once a crisis it was a big crisis and of payza meaning the day when the carbon peso has brought fell on a Shabbos and nobody knew what to do they didn't know if you should bring that sacrifice if the sacrifice pushes off Shabbos or if a half or the sacrifice gets deferred because of Shabbos why because they couldn't figure out if the carbon peso is Saborio it if it's an individual or communal offering because there's an aspect of the carbon passive which adheres to both on one hand it's very much a Corbin York had an individual offering because everyone has to do it everyone has to do it you have to partake and it sacrifice there are certain you have to register for it you have to go in on one lamb each household or your combined households and every individual has to eat from the lamb you have to eat that cause iose that that ounce of meat in fact on the Seder night you know the ex jerk is ice that we eat this to represent there's the COS ice we eat that's the matzah that he loved eating mats and then there's the extra which represents the the meat from the from the from the lamb that we would have been eating so that's very much in that way an individualistic offering and the other hand everybody does it and it's all at the same time it's not me like something happened special to you it's a certain date and it's a date for the entire nation so on that in that way it's sort of very much a collective offer of communal offering they said they didn't know what to do came Hillel hello the Babylonian and he'll had been the student of Maya and of talion schmeyer Naphtali in were gaily Sadek they were righteous converts who became the great transmitters of the oral tradition in their generation and they taught may taught a generation but hillo was their great disciple hell we know the stories about his self-sacrifice to study from smile of tallian he actually when there was a admission fee charged at the base mother she climbed up on the roof and he learned through the skylight so at any rate when the Bonet Becerra the heads of the Sanhedrin the High Court could not establish could not determine the nature of the carbon passive in order to figure out whether or not this year it should push off Shabbos or Chavez should push off it came Hillel and said like this guys there's an aspect of the carbon passer which is like a commune offering there's an aspect that's like an individual offering because of the aspect that is like a communal offering I've received the tradition that it pushes off Shabbos and we do bring the carbon passer on Shabbos one edifice of false on Shabbos you do bring the carbon and in fact many of us are probably familiar with the famous adage saying of Hilla which is empirically obvious right II mean I kneel Amelie if I'm not for myself who will be the eeeem ain't on the Le lots me ma honey and if I am only for myself what am I the my ox of a Masai and if not now when so that has many different levels of meaning one of them is homiletically hello talking about the compass of itself yeah what is he saying if I'm if I'm not for myself meaning if I don't bring a carbon passer individually who will bring it for me every individual Jew has to be involved in combat sir on the other hand if I'm only for myself what am i if I'm the only one bringing it as if it were an individual offering that's not what carbon peso has it's something that all the Jews do together and therefore if not now meaning when even when had a face that falls on Shabbos when he's wants to do it obviously you do it right now so that three rhetorical questions also on another level homiletically refers to his clarification that you do bring the carbon peso had an air of Shabbos so what do we see from this the very first act we did as juice comes out and establishes that it is impossible to say that we are purely collectivist or purely individualist there is an inextricable interweaving of the two and that is Jewish identity now how are we supposed to apply that in life so here's the idea that from the point of view of the individual Jewish identity is the community from the point of view of the community Jewish identity is the individual and if you got what I mean and that's it I don't have to say another word but if you need clarification what does that mean what's a healthy individual a healthy individual cannot live for himself a healthy individual has to be self transcendent a healthy individual puts aside his own interests and lives for a greater cause so ironically when is the individual most sustainable not when the individual tries to focus on its own his or her own self perpetuation but rather sets aside its own self interests and becomes greater than himself greater than herself and and pursues a greater a greater good deb le mela mallesh ensk when he had returned from two years of wandering of self-imposed exile he was entering into the town and as he was entering the town he saw somebody he knew and the the person saw him and then sort of looked very somber and said oh I'm sorry you probably don't know that your son laser care is not well sort of Alamelu came home he had hey hey he hadn't seen his wife in two years and he says I just heard the laser kids not well what's wrong and she says no abortion laser because he's in Heder he's fine so he says no please tell me I know that laser cos not well no varnish unless it gets an indicator he's fine I heard that he's not well tell me what's wrong where did you hear he's not well a belly mouth tells the story so then his wife puts two and two together she says ah that whoever told you that is mistaken there's another laser Knabe er he's not well yeah unfortunately never is not very not well yeah that's true no belly Malik looks at his wife and says I need permission to go back into exile he says after two years of wandering which was supposed to bring me to a higher level of self refinement I felt relief when I knew that it was a different laser cure what difference should it make to me whether it's our child who's not well or the neighbor's child is not well I see that I still need to refine myself because ultimately what what does it mean that the individual has to set aside his or her own agenda and interests and live for the greater good it really means that there's that sense of what hurts any other member of this nation hurts me it affects me no there's the famous story well-known story about the Mendel bayless blood libel that after decades centuries of the blood libel being completely phased out in the 1900s there was a there's a return of a blood libel against Mendel bailiffs and there was a famous trial that went on for a very long time very highly covered in the media and anyways one of the charges was of course the he killed this this Ukrainian non-jewish boy because the Jews Talmud permits them to take non-jews lives because they don't regard them as human like where does it say that oh because the passenger says Adam koream Adam you the Jewish people are called Adam other means man so by by inference you're calling other people not human so that obviously doesn't say that but that they had how did they defend it so they went to their mayor Shapiro and he was part of the defense team and he explained what did he explain that he said this little boy was murdered not by the defendant but by someone this family gets up every day that they don't have their child but let me ask you did life move on for the rest of their village did life move on for the rest of the Ukraine it did and yet my defendant Mendel bailiffs he sits on trial and every single morning every Jew in the world whether he's in Paris or New York or Buenos Aires opens up the newspaper and the first thing he does is find out what's going on with Mendel bailiffs as if he himself is on trial he says you want to know what it means you are called Adam all of them doesn't mean at people other means a person of them a person you attempt plural the Jewish people cream of them are called a person there's not a people called the Jews there's a person called the Jews is one guy the Jewish people are one guy whatever happens to one Jew it's happening to all Jews all over the world there's a story mm-hmm the child was found dead it was murdered all the trial oh he's acquitted in the end yeah yeah I'm actually moved to America afterwards that by the way that's just but it was over a hundred years ago and you're sitting on spill kiss in five towns in 2020 what happened to Mendel Bayless it doesn't just transcend space it transcends time that's that if you need it you don't need any greater proof than that that's what it means that individualist identity gives way to collectivist identity that what's happening to any other member of this nation it's like it's happening to me okay now on the other hand let's flip it let's flip it there's something called the collective giving away to the individual just like a healthy individual cannot be it cannot be that a healthy individual exists for its own self perpetuation a healthy individual has to have a greater cause greater than itself same exact thing with a collector with a community with a nation with an institution with a whatever group whatever where you have multiple people it cannot exist for its own self perpetuation it has to be there for something greater than itself in this case it means that the group sacrifices itself for the individual okay how do you see that unfortunately there's a halakhah which has been applied thousands if not millions of times in Jewish history I say unfortunately because it deals with martyrdom there's a hollow claw that if a group of Jews is besieged by their enemies and they are told new law new academic M turn over one of you or we will kill all of you the halacha is you tell them I'm sorry do whatever you want to do but we're not handing over one of us to you now if you would ask logically speaking if you were trying to engineer a society a group a minority group that would survive for a long time would you give them this rule this rule does not sound like it would lend itself to that group surviving very long I'm saying if you were engineering socially engineering this this thing called the Jews and the Jews are gonna be a minority and you want them to last for a few thousand years you want to keep them around so what kind of and they're gonna be persecuted so what kind of law should you make in those in the event that they're there they're being persecuted I would say whatever will keep them most of them alive that's what we're gonna do and comes along this irrational law and says no kill us all we're not giving over one of us it's counterintuitive absolutely counterintuitive that a nation should have that rule and still exist and to have outlived all of its oppressors and to be here for so long and the only answer is that just like a healthy individual is one that overlooks its own self-interest a healthy group overlooks its self-interest healthy individual overlooks its self-interest by living for the group a healthy group overlooks its self-interest by living for the individual the group good gives way to the individual good so for instance at one time I was speaking at a Habad house where they had gotten to the point where they wanted to make a nice Shaba tone to bring out a speaker okay I mean common type of situation for me to be in and I see these things all the time generally by the time I'm brought to an event a Shabbos this is already where they have been cursed with success and what I mean by curse with success is I see it because I see this all the time I mean every other shop is I see another one of these things you have all these people now coming into your into your institution and you want to bring them together now they weren't doing this when they first started you know why they weren't doing when they first start first of all they couldn't afford it but second of all maybe even primarily they had plenty of us they had plenty you know spirit of camaraderie and oneness you know why because they were eight nine guys sitting there until 11 o'clock trying to get the tenth guy to come in and make Dominion and they were very bonded and now they have two hundred guys and now the guy who walks in at eleven o'clock by no fault of his own not only does do you not throw him on your shoulders and give him a ticker tape parade because he made Dominion but you know maybe even so I'm gonna come over and say uh you're in my muhkam cool that's my seat so all that a second when we had nine guys we're standing said this what I told you I said to them when we had nine guys I didn't even know that this was true but I could guess and it was true said when we had nine guys we're standing outside we're looking for the center we're looking for that precious coveted tenth man to bring in the Sarina when you have 200 guys who's standing on the sidewalk looking to cop that that next Jew the question becomes are the individuals for the minion the collective or does the collective the minion exist for the individuals if you made the minion because you want to have a minion okay so you have one now you have one so the minion serves its purpose you have a minion great and now we're done we don't have to go looking for juice anymore but if the purpose of a minion is to elevate the individual to bring in as many Jews as possible to give them a Jewish experience then we're not done just because we have to 100 men 2,000 men we still have to stand out on the sidewalk with the same eager anticipation of bringing in one more Jim okay and that's what makes a healthy group and we see we see for ourselves a little commentary here and I'll get off my soapbox in 30 seconds getting on okay no institution starts as the soulless faceless machine that it becomes every institution started with a good intention a group of people got together to address an issue to to improve the lives of individuals it always starts that way and then what happens the curse of success it becomes a bureaucracy it becomes a machine right then there's red tape and there's all through this committees and this and then what happens it becomes stagnant because the institution exists for the sake of its own self perpetuation why does the organization exist in order to keep the organization in existence and that's when it becomes stagnant it loses its soul it loses its purpose and the only way for it to come alive again and regain its soul is for that institution that organization that group to say it cannot just be here for itself it has to be here for individuals just like the individual cannot be for himself or herself an individual has to be for the whole so to a collective a group an organization has to be for individuals yeah something that people may have to decide you know which way is it gonna be the element that's maybe a little bit missing to me it sounds like is the idea that this is based on the color that was divinely given it's really not ours necessarily it's the same way it is the Torah is telling us that it's both okay that's the whole point that when we're trying to figure out how we should frame our own identity Torah itself establishes from the very beginning from day one from mitzvah one that you cannot have one without the other now the question becomes how do you have both when they're opposites and this is the answer so then so it depends if you're talking to an individual then the individual has to know Judaism is not about individual identity Judaism is about the greater good if you're talking to an organization a group an institution a school a shul AG amok a charity hazard organization whatever it might be a minion you have to tell the group the group cannot exist for the sake of the group the group exists for the sake of the individual and it's better to dismantle the group to Nuala no athlet me can't no Tyler says better too that the whole group should go then to sacrifice to reject to give up on one individual in other words the word is mysterious nefesh mr. starfish all Judaism is it sorry to spoil a few but punchline is the bottom line everything in the sky the bottom line is sits nefesh giving it all up complete surrender so miss citizen a fish for the individual is found when you realize that it doesn't matter if it's your laser care or the neighbours laser care that we're all one person doesn't matter who Mendel Bayless was if he lived a hundred years ago in Russia or if he's in 2020 and Cedarhurst it's all one person and then conversely those who are leaders and those who are not just the leaders but those who are part of organizations all of us are part of organizations I mean that's just how we function we function within a society we have to hold organizations accountable that they should stay true to their original mandate which was to serve individuals and an organization cannot and again I say this is the the the the curse of success Baruch Hashem American jewelry right now is very well established after the war especially you know like in America what they did the the degree to which yudish kite was organized was I mean people were scrambling they were they there was no infrastructure there was no funding and and and therefore what did you see literally every leader every askin everyone who cared for the Jewish people what did they do they didn't deal with Jewish people as a people they were out there for individuals they were going door to door knocking on doors trying to get one more kid in a Talmud Torah okay and now that we have these great buildings and institutions oh it's all the collective oh and sorry you know we don't mean you don't we're full we can't think your kid we're full okay anyways go back to day one Mitzvah one-carbon pasa what's a carbon sacrifice who sacrifice for the individual the sacrifices for the greater good for the greater good the sacrifices for the individual