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Chumash Series

Teaching Materials

Goal: Understanding of what Klal Israel is.

Secondary Goal: Appreciating the benefit of having a group identity.

Tertiary Goal: Exploring how independent individuals (the goal that we promoted in the previous class) can exist within a single, organic group.

Beginning to learn:

1. Ask your class: "Why do we join groups?"

Clarify the question: "We take for granted that in addition to being individuals we are also members of groups. Ask someone to tell you who he is and he begins telling you all the groups of which he is a member: 'I am a father/husband/wife (i.e. member of a family) a Jew, an American, I work for IBM, I am a member of the ELK's etc.' Why is that? Why do we join groups?" Your class will correctly identify that joining groups serves a number of basic human needs:

1. It gives us a sense of strength and frees us from the anxiety and vulnerability of isolation.  
2. It gives us a sense of purpose.
3. We have more resources and we can achieve more with a group.
4. It permits us to complete ourselves through our relation with others.

1. What is the risk involved in joining a group?  Considering the previous class, they should appreciate that social institutions challenge our abilities to think and exist independently.  The generation of the dispersion is an excellent example of this tension.

Ask someone to read Genesis 11,1--11,4.
Ask your class why the people built a Tower. They will correctly identify that the people were afraid of becoming isolated, and they wanted something that would give them meaning and shared purpose.  Imagine the enormous potential, power, and appeal of a worldwide, universal coalition! 
The appeal of such a project is so great that people are not only willing, they would be eager to throw away their freedom and individuality in order to experience that sort of group immortality.
Illustrations:

1. Hitler was democratically elected though he made no secret of his fascist vision for Germany. The Nazis gained extraordinary devotion among the people of Germany. If you look at the tears of ecstasy on the face of Austrians at the time of the Anschluss (unification of Austria and Germany before WWII) you will recognize how willing people are to give their freedom and individuality to someone who offers them eternity in return.
2. Many people in Russia today want to return to the security of the Soviet Union. Totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union offer collective security in return for the surrender of individual freedom.
3. The Talmud says that the people of Babel were united, but that individuals were worth nothing. They were only resources of the group, less valuable than bricks. ("If a brick fell and broke people would cry, but if a person fell and died they would simply go on with their work.")

Summary: Point out that the Torah is giving a lesson in political science. The Tower of Babel was driven by fear of isolation and meaninglessness. In their fear they bonded together into a society which robbed individuals of worth and tried to build an achievement which would give them collective immortality.  It is an attempt to escape from the anxiety of individuality by merging into a group. Ask your class to tell you about, or at least to think about, some of the groups that they are part of.  What is the appeal?  In what ways are they forced to compromise their independence and individuality.

1. Demonstrate to the class that the Torah’s group vision is realized when creative individuals focus their unique talents and ideas in the interest of a common purpose. 

In order to appreciate this idea, we will study the story of Nadav and Avihu.  Provide some background: The Jews in the desert were commanded to build a "mishkan," a temple, or literally, a home for G-d's presence. The temple was built with the donations of all the Jewish people. When the temple was finished there was a period of seven days of inauguration of the temple. On the eighth day G-d's presence came and filled the temple. The presence of G-d in the mishkan was so clear and tangible that it dispelled any possibility of doubt of the reality of G-d.

Ask your class to read Leviticus 10,1--10,5. Tell your class that Nadav and Avihu were the greatest of the Jews, men of enormous spiritual, intellectual, and emotional ability. Ask what Nadav and Avihu did wrong. Here the Torah says explicitly that they "offered fire not commanded by G-d." Ask your class what that means, and why making an offering G-d hadn't commanded is so bad.

This is a question they can answer for themselves. The simple bottom line appears to be that G-d wants your service of Him to be structured by commandment, not by what you feel like offering.  (This concept is important, and it is related to class 5.)
But:

1. Ask your class to read Exodus 35,29. Point out that the mishkan was built by voluntary and individual offerings. Furthermore, the exact language of the Torah is "by every man and woman whose heart prompted them (asher nadav libam.)" Underline the contradiction: The Torah says that Nadav's fault was to make a voluntary offering. On the other hand the Temple is built with voluntary offerings, which are called offerings of the nadav lev, which the heart prompts. Furthermore, there is a place in the Torah for voluntary offerings: they are called nadavot. Ask your class: How would you reconcile this contradiction? If what Nadav does is treife, why is a nadava kosher? They won't have an answer. Ask them to tell you what is common among the following midrashic explanations of what was wrong with Nadav and Avihu:

1.  Nadav and Avihu would walk behind Moshe and Aharon, asking themselves, "when will these two old men die so that we can lead the Jewish People?"
2. When Nadav and Avihu went up onto Mt. Sinai with Moshe and Aharon and the 70 elders they gazed in a disrespectful way at G-d (Shemot 24,9--24,11).
3. Nadav and Avihu refused to marry because they felt that no woman was worthy of them.

The obvious common denominator is that they were arrogant, preoccupied with their own greatness. Their greatness didn't connect them with their community, teachers etc. It made them totally separate. Nadav is a man who made nedivus (individuality) his whole identity.   G-d wants us to maximize our individual potentials.  As we explained at the beginning of the class, we accomplish this when we cooperate in groups.  Furthermore, G-d wants us to invest our individual potentials in something more meaningful than aelf-promotion. 

1. Summary: Loss of individual identity in the community leads to destruction, as we find in the story of the Tower of Babel.  Preoccupation with individual identity leads to destruction -- Nadav and Avihu. The ideal balance is one in which we are totally unique and at the same time totally connected into a larger "us."  This is the key challenge in forming groups. 

Illustrations of this tension:

1. In a family we struggle with the question, "to have my own identity do I have to separate myself from my parents and family? Do be connected with my parents do I have to surrender myself?
2. For there to be an ‘us’ in marriage, do I have to give up the ‘I’?

(On a practical level, how do we negotiate this challenge?  This is addressed in the next class.)
Summary: The ideal relationship between self and community is one in which I am simultaneously totally individual and totally identified and connected with the community. Tell your class: You have an experience of that relationship every day.
Illustration: My hand is totally unique. Its role isn't duplicated by any other part of my body. At the same time my hand is totally associated with my body. Furthermore, my hand is totally transformed by its relationship with my body. The difference between a hand lying on the floor and a hand connected to a body isn't incremental. My hand is transformed by its relationship with my body and my body is completed by my hands attachment.

Summary: The Jewish People is like a body. Every individual is totally unique and yet (potentially) totally identified and transformed by the community. The midrash says that if one of the Jews had been missing at Mt. Sinai the Shechina would not have come to them because part of the picture would have been lacking, unduplicated by what any other individual had to offer.

 

Rabbi Nachum Braverman studied philosophy at Yale University. For many years he served as Educational Director of Aish HaTorah Los Angeles, and is now Executive Director of Aish HaTorah's Jerusalem Fund for the Western Region. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.