Responsibility refers to experiencing duty (הָבֹחו) and accepting a Divine order from above and corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom (malchut). Here too, there are two different levels of responsibility, like the two different levels of dedication. The first level of responsibility is similar to the responsibility of a soldier. A soldier must fulfill his task. He will eventually have to give a reckoning to his commander, and he will be held accountable for how he performed his duty.
But there is a saying in Chasidic tradition that a soldier who remains with the rank of a private until he retires from the army is not worth much. A soldier must strive to advance in rank. Though he could be very responsible as a private, he might be doing his thing correctly, but if he does not want to advance in rank, he is not valuable even as a private. Every soldier should at least want to become an officer, otherwise he is not doing his very best and meeting his potential.
To advance in the army, one needs to feel responsible for more and more people. A private is responsible only for himself. A non-commissioned officer might be responsible for a small group of soldiers. To become an officer, one has to be willing to assume even more responsibility. Every higher rank requires more and more responsibility for more people. The ultimate responsibility is attained when I feel myself responsible for the whole world.
How can a simple Jew or a simple man feel that he or she is responsible for the entire world? The sages teach us that the whole world is continuously hanging in balance. Seemingly, the good and the merit are on one side of the scales and the evil and the faults on the other, and they just balance out. In this situation, if I perform just one good deed, I tip the scales of the entire world toward the good, to the merit. The Torah tells us that this is how we should feel regarding everything we do—that we are constantly responsible for the state of the entire world. To restate this idea in simple language: the two levels of responsibility are taking on the yoke of responsibility for myself and my conduct and taking on the yoke of responsibility for my community; from the individual to the community, all the way to the community of all mankind.
Since this corresponds to the sefirah of kingdom, the corollary is that by assuming responsibility for our personal conduct and for the entire world, we are bringing God’s kingdom to the world. Through responsibility, God will be King over the whole world. All as a result of my sense of responsibility. I am the one responsible for making God King over the whole world. And I accomplish this by performing even a single good deed with this sense of responsibility in mind, that I have the power to tip the scales of the whole world to good.
