At the beginning of this week’s parsha, Moshe performs a tikkun, repairing a past mistake, namely the sin of the Golden Calf. The Torah signals this by using almost the same word at the beginning of both episodes. The word used eventually became a key word in Jewish spirituality: k-h-l, meaning “to gather together”. From this root we get the words kahal and kehillah, meaning “community.” The importance of this word continues to this day. In fact, recent scientific research confirms the extraordinary power of communities and social networks to shape our lives.
The episode of the Golden Calf began with these words: “When the people saw that Moshe was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered themselves [vayikahel] around Aharon” (Shemot 32:1).
At the beginning of this parsha, having won God’s forgiveness and brought down a second set of Tablets, Moshe begins the work of redirecting the people: “Moshe assembled [vayak’hel] the entire Israelite congregation” (Shemot 35:1).
They had sinned as a community. Now they were about to be reconstituted as a community. Jewish spirituality is first and foremost a communal spirituality.
Notice what Moshe does next. He directs their attention to the two great centers of community in Judaism, one in space, the other in time. The one in time is Shabbat. The one in space was the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, that led eventually to the Temple and then to the synagogue. These are where the kehillah lives most powerfully: on Shabbat when we lay aside our private devices and desires and come together as a community; and in the synagogue, where our community has its home.
Judaism attaches immense significance to the individual. We are taught that every life is like a universe. Each one of us, though we are all in God’s image, is different, therefore unique and irreplaceable. Yet the first time the words “not good” appear in the Torah are in the verse, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Bereishit 2:18). This is significant. It indicates how much of Judaism is about the shape and structure of our togetherness. We value the individual, but we do not endorse individualism. Ours is a religion of community. This is why our holiest prayers can only be said in the presence of a minyan, the minimum definition of a community. When we pray, we do so as a community. Hence, to atone for the sin the Israelites committed as a community, Moshe sought to consecrate community in time and place.
This is arguably one of the most important functions of religion in a secular age, namely, keeping community alive. Most of us need community. We are social animals. Evolutionary biologists have suggested recently that the huge increase in brain size represented by Homo sapiens was specifically to allow us to form greater social networks. It is the human capacity to co-operate in large teams – rather than the power of reason – that makes us different from other animals. As the Torah says, it is not good to be alone.
By placing community at the heart of the religious life and by giving it a home in space and time – in the synagogue and in Shabbat – Moshe was showing us community’s potential to do good, just as the episode of the Golden Calf had shown its power for bad. We should always strive to remember that Jewish spirituality is not about solitude. It is, for the most part, profoundly communal. Hence my definition of Jewish faith: the redemption of our solitude.
