The idea of the Sabbatical Year is for a social reset. To teach us that we have to help our fellows know how to make a living and to train them to do so.

Now for a quick d’var Torah.

One of the subjects covered in this week’s parashah is Shemitah, the sabbatical year. Every seventh year, the land is allowed to lie fallow, debts are forgiven, and a Hebrew servant goes free—unless he chooses to remain with his master.

That raises an interesting question: Why would anyone choose to remain a slave? And why does the Torah require that, if he makes that choice, his ear is pierced?

The Sages explain that God wants us to be free people. We are meant to be servants of God, not permanent servants of another human being. The piercing of the ear is not simply a punishment. It is a reminder that the ear which heard at Mount Sinai, “For the Children of Israel are My servants,” has chosen a different kind of servitude.

Shemitah is also a national reset. The Torah teaches that poverty should not become permanent. People go through difficult times, and society has an obligation to help them get back on their feet. When a Hebrew servant is released, he is not sent away empty-handed. The Torah commands that he be given resources so he can begin a new life with dignity and the ability to support himself.

Sometimes a person became a servant because he stole and could not repay what he had taken. Jewish law insists that the victim be made whole. If the thief has nothing left to repay—even after his possessions are sold—he may be sold into servitude so that his labor can repay the debt. In a sense, the person who treated someone else’s property as worthless now learns the value of responsibility. More importantly, during those years he learns how to work, manage a household, and support himself honestly.

The goal is never humiliation. The goal is rehabilitation. The Torah seeks to restore a person’s dignity, not destroy it. By the time he leaves, he has a trade, experience, and the means to build a better future.

The message of Shemitah is that people deserve a second chance. Society must uphold justice, but it must also create opportunities for redemption. Freedom carries responsibility, and when we help people regain their independence with dignity, we strengthen the entire community.

Something to think about.

The Torah’s purpose in only have one central Tabernacle (later Temple) was so that we would be one nation with one set of rituals. Otherwise, there is anarchy.

Now for a quick D’var Torah.

One of the themes in this week’s parashah is the command that there be one central place for the Mishkan, and later for the Temple. The Torah does not want people setting up sanctuaries wherever they please. The obvious question is: Why insist on one central place instead of many?

There are several reasons. First, remember the purpose of the wilderness experience. Getting the Jews out of Egypt was the easy part. Getting Egypt out of the Jews was much harder. The surrounding cultures worshipped at countless local shrines and temples, each dedicated to a different god. The Torah rejects that model. God is teaching us that our culture is to be built on Torah—not on whatever seems right to us at the moment, but on God’s commandments.

There is another important lesson. A single sanctuary unifies the nation. Three times a year, Jews from every corner of the country would come together in one place. They met people they otherwise never would have known. They learned from one another, strengthened their common identity, and left with a deeper sense that they were one people.

There is an interesting historical parallel. Before World War II, many U.S. Army regiments were organized by state. A regiment might consist almost entirely of men from New York or Massachusetts. During World War I, that sometimes meant an entire town lost nearly all of its young men in a single battle. By World War II, the Army abandoned that system and mixed soldiers from across the country. The change not only spread the burden of war more fairly, it also strengthened national unity. Men served alongside Americans from every region. Later, after the Army was desegregated, soldiers of different races served together and came to see one another simply as fellow Americans.

The Torah is teaching a similar principle. Every community has its own customs and traditions, but there must be one central authority and one shared foundation. Without that, society eventually descends into division and even anarchy.

Remember the setting of this parashah. It takes place about a month before the Jewish people enter the Land of Israel. Moses is delivering his final instructions on how to build a nation. A nation needs a common center, shared institutions, and a common standard of law.

That is why the Torah insists on one place of worship. It is not merely about geography; it is about unity. Even today, Jews around the world have different customs. You can walk into an Ashkenazi or Sephardi synagogue and notice differences in melody or tradition, yet the core prayers and the halachic framework remain the same. As the Rema wrote his glosses on the Shulchan Aruch, he preserved local customs while maintaining one unified legal system.

The lesson is timeless. Diversity of custom is a strength, but unity of purpose is essential. A people remain strong when they share a common foundation, recognize a common authority, and remember that they are all part of something greater than themselves.

Something to think about.

We are commanded to help the poor in our community. But we are also commanded not to become poor in the process. That is why the greatest form of Tzedakah is to give someone a job.

Tzedakah, Wealth, and the Moral Economy

And now for a quick devar Torah.

This week’s parsha discusses the obligation to tithe and to give tzedakah—to care for the less fortunate among us. But the laws of charity contain an important balance.

Traditionally, a person should give at least ten percent of his income to charity. Yet the rabbis generally established an upper limit of twenty percent. Under ordinary circumstances, a person should not give away so much that he impoverishes himself.

Why? Because while we are commanded to care for the poor, we are not commanded to make ourselves poor. A healthy community needs people who have the resources to build businesses, invest, create opportunities, and provide employment.

In fact, one of the highest forms of tzedakah is helping another person find work or become self-sufficient. When someone has a job, he is no longer merely receiving from society. He is contributing to society, supporting himself, and perhaps even becoming capable of giving tzedakah to others.

Of course, employers do not normally hire people simply because those people need money. They hire them because they believe the employee can contribute something of value. That is not a defect in the economic system. It is what allows employment to become sustainable and dignified rather than merely another form of temporary charity.

This brings us to the famous teaching in Pirkei Avot:

“If there is no flour, there is no Torah; and if there is no Torah, there is no flour.”

“If there is no flour, there is no Torah” means that spiritual and intellectual life require a material foundation. People need food, shelter, and economic security. A society must possess enough wealth to support schools, synagogues, teachers, scholars, and charitable institutions.

But the teaching continues: “If there is no Torah, there is no flour.” Economic success also depends upon morality. If people steal from one another, cheat in business, break their promises, or refuse to respect property and contracts, the entire economy begins to deteriorate.

Commerce depends upon trust. Sometimes enormous business agreements have been sealed with little more than a handshake because each side believed that the other would keep his word. Laws are important, but no legal system can replace personal honesty. An economy cannot flourish when everyone assumes that everyone else is trying to cheat him.

The Torah therefore teaches us that wealth and morality are not enemies. We need a productive economy, but we also need a moral society to guide it. Wealth creates the ability to perform tzedakah, while Torah teaches us how that wealth should be earned, used, and shared.

The goal of tzedakah is not merely to keep someone dependent upon charity. Its highest purpose is to help that person move beyond poverty—to restore his dignity, independence, and ability to contribute.

We must give generously, but wisely. We must care for the poor without destroying our own ability to help. The Torah does not ask us simply to distribute poverty. It asks us to create a society in which more people can stand on their own feet and, eventually, help others do the same.

Something to think about.

The use of the singular verb to begin the Parsha shows that we are all morally responsible for our actions. The use of the plural “to you” shows that as individuals we are a society.

A Quick Devar Torah: One Person Can Build a Society

This week’s parashah, Re’eh, begins with an interesting grammatical anomaly. The opening word, Re’eh—”See”—is in the singular. Moshe is speaking as if to one individual: You, pay attention to what I am about to say. But immediately afterward he says, “I place before you today a blessing and a curse,” and the word “before you” is in the plural.

Did the Torah make a grammatical mistake? Of course not.

The Torah is teaching something profound. Moshe is reminding every Jew to hear the message personally. Even though the blessings and curses affect the entire nation, each individual must accept responsibility for his or her own choices.

Society is not some abstract thing. Society is simply the sum of millions of individual decisions. When each person accepts responsibility for doing what is right, the entire community becomes stronger.

That is why Moshe speaks to each of us individually before addressing us collectively. He is saying, “You standing there—don’t think that because you’re only one person your actions don’t matter. They do.”

This reflects an important principle of Jewish thought. Judaism has room for debate. We may disagree about many interpretations and ideas, but we do not believe that morality itself is merely a matter of personal opinion. Today we often hear phrases like, “That’s your morality,” or even, “Those are your facts.” Judaism rejects that kind of moral relativism. Facts are facts, whether we like them or not. Likewise, what is morally right or wrong is not determined simply by personal preference.

Take kashrut as an example. A non-Jew who does not keep kosher is doing nothing morally wrong. But for a Jew, keeping kosher is one of the mitzvot through which we sanctify our lives. The great rabbis have debated for centuries the reasons behind the laws of kashrut, and no single explanation has been universally accepted. What we do know is that God commanded us to observe them, trusting that they help shape us into better Jews and better people.

The same is true of all the mitzvot. Each one asks the individual to take responsibility.

Moshe is saying: You must give tzedakah. You must do acts of kindness. You must choose blessing.

This reminds us of Hillel’s famous teaching:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

We must take responsibility for ourselves, but we must never forget that we are part of something larger. Others are watching us. Our example influences our families, our friends, and our communities.

When each individual chooses to do what is right, society itself is transformed.

Something to think about.

Perhaps the greatest gift that God has given us it free will. We are permitted to make mistakes, but we are responsible for our mistakes. With Freedom comes responsibility.

Now for a Quick Devar Torah

This week’s parashah, Re’eh, begins with Moshe’s powerful words: “See, I place before you today a blessing and a curse.” In other words, the choice is ours. We decide whether to follow God’s commandments or not.

Remember the setting. Moshe is preparing the Jewish people to enter the Land of Israel. He tells them that whether they remain in the land will ultimately depend on the choices they make. God gives us one of His greatest gifts: free will.

That may sound obvious, but free will includes something we often overlook: God allows us to make mistakes.

There is an interesting Jewish custom. When visiting a cemetery, many Jews tuck in the tzitzit of their tallit katan. The Talmud explains that we should not perform mitzvot in front of the dead because it would be like mocking them. They can no longer fulfill commandments, while we still can.

But there is another side to that idea. We can still choose to do the wrong thing as well. We are still capable of sin. The deceased no longer have choices. We do. Life is precious because every day presents another opportunity to choose between right and wrong.

Yet Moshe immediately reminds us that freedom does not eliminate responsibility. We are accountable for every decision we make. God took us out of Egypt to make us a free people, but freedom does not mean, “I can do whatever I want.” Freedom means accepting responsibility for what we choose to do.

This also helps explain the forty years in the wilderness. God knew that a generation raised in slavery was not yet ready to build a free society. Freedom must be learned. A slave mentality does not disappear overnight.

History offers many examples. In the early nineteenth century, Americans helped establish Liberia as a homeland for freed African Americans. During the presidency of James Monroe, the capital was named Monrovia in his honor. Tragically, many of the settlers recreated a society with sharp social hierarchies, reflecting patterns they had known before. The lesson is sobering: people often reproduce the systems they grew up with unless they consciously build something better.

The Israelites had to learn not simply to leave Egypt, but to stop thinking like Egypt. They needed time to become a nation capable of governing itself according to justice and moral law.

The United States provides another interesting parallel. As we mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worth remembering that the American founders did more than throw off British rule. They understood that political freedom alone was not enough. They first tried the Articles of Confederation, discovered their weaknesses, and then wrote the Constitution to create a stronger and more enduring system of government.

It is also noteworthy that scholars have long observed that the Book of Deuteronomy was among the biblical books most frequently cited during America’s founding era. That is understandable. Deuteronomy is not simply a book of religious law. It is a blueprint for building a moral society, one that places limits on power, insists on justice, and reminds both leaders and citizens that they are accountable to something higher than themselves.

Moshe’s message is timeless. The choice is ours. We can build a society of blessing or one that brings upon itself the consequences of its own actions. Blessings are not automatic. They must be earned through responsibility, justice, and faithful choices.

Something to think about.

One of the hardest things for us to remember is that God has given us talents and it is up to us to use them properly.

In Good Times and Bad Times, Remember Who Gave You the Tools

Now for a quick Devar Torah.

This week’s Haftarah comes from Isaiah, and one of its great messages is: Do not despair.

Isaiah is speaking to a people who have suffered, who have experienced tragedy and uncertainty, and who might understandably ask, “Has God forgotten us?”

Isaiah answers with one of the most powerful images in the Bible: Can a mother forget her child? And even if such a thing were possible, God says, “I will not forget you.”

But there are really two dangers we face in life, and they are two sides of the same coin.

The first comes when everything seems to be going wrong.

Nothing works. We suffer disappointment, loss, or failure, and we begin to despair. We may say, “God has forgotten me,” or even, “There is no God. I have to put my faith somewhere else—in government, in an ideology, in a revolution, in something.”

Faith gives us another way of looking at adversity. It allows us to say, “I don’t understand why this is happening. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But I believe that my life still has meaning and that I have not been forgotten.”

Faith does not make suffering disappear. It gives us a framework within which we can face suffering without surrendering to despair.

But there is another danger, and strangely enough, it comes when everything is going right.

We succeed. We make money. We accomplish things. And suddenly we say, “Look what I did. I’m a self-made man.”

That danger is addressed directly in this week’s parsha, Eikev. Moses warns the Jewish people that when they enter the Land of Israel, build good houses, acquire wealth, and become successful, they must not say:

“My strength and the might of my hand made me all this wealth.”

Instead, the Torah tells us to remember God, “for it is He who gives you the power to create wealth.”

Notice what the Torah is saying. It does not say that you didn’t work hard. It doesn’t say that your accomplishments aren’t real. It says: remember where the ability to accomplish those things came from.

There used to be a radio talk-show host, Rush Limbaugh, who described his ability as “talent on loan from God.”

Someone might hear that and think it sounds egotistical. But there is actually an important religious idea behind the phrase.

Perhaps instead of saying that God loaned us our talents, we might say that God invested them in us.

Each of us has been given something. Intelligence. Creativity. Leadership. Compassion. Business ability. The ability to teach, to build, to organize, to make people laugh, or simply to be there when another person needs us.

The talents are different because the people are different.

And after 120 years, when we stand before God, perhaps the question will not be, “How much money did you make?” or “How famous did you become?”

Perhaps the question will be:

“I invested these talents in you. What did you do with them?”

Did you use them?

Did you use them for good?

Did you make your community a little better because you were there?

Did you help the people around you?

Or did you waste what you were given?

That is why neither wealth nor poverty by itself tells us the moral worth of a person. Success does not make someone righteous, and it certainly does not make someone evil. Poverty does not make someone righteous, nor does it mean that someone failed. Life is more complicated than that.

The question is what we do with the circumstances and abilities we have been given.

Think of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. He spends plenty of time arguing with God. He certainly wouldn’t mind having a little more money. In “If I Were a Rich Man,” he imagines what life would be like if God finally made him wealthy.

But Tevye keeps talking to God.

That may be the point.

When things are bad, don’t conclude that God has forgotten you.

And when things are good, don’t conclude that you no longer need God.

In adversity, don’t surrender to despair.

In success, don’t surrender to arrogance.

Remember that whatever talents we possess are an investment God has made in us.

The question is what we are going to do with that investment.

Something to think about.

We sometimes forget to bless God for the simple things that He does for us. This week we are reminded not to take anything for granted.

Don’t Take the “Easy” Things for Granted

Now for a quick Devar Torah.

This week’s parsha is Eikev, a word that can literally mean “heel.” The rabbis see a lesson in that unusual word. There are mitzvot that seem so ordinary, so easy, or so minor that we barely notice them. They are the mitzvot that a person might figuratively trample under his heel.

And the Torah is telling us: Be careful. Just because something seems small does not mean it is unimportant.

There are mitzvot that obviously feel significant. Keeping kosher, observing Shabbat, fasting on Yom Kippur—we know these are important. But Judaism also reaches into the most mundane parts of life. There are traditions governing something as ordinary as how we put on and tie our shoes. The lesson is that holiness isn’t reserved for the dramatic moments of life. It can be found in the things we do every single day without thinking about them.

Bread is a wonderful example.

After eating bread, we recite Birkat Hamazon, the Grace After Meals, a detailed series of blessings. Why such an elaborate blessing over bread, one of the most ordinary foods imaginable?

Perhaps precisely because it is ordinary.

Bread has been a basic food of human civilization for thousands of years. We see it so often that we can easily take it for granted. Yet think about what is required to produce a loaf of bread.

Look at a field of wheat. If you did not know what was going to happen next, you would never imagine that those stalks would eventually become the loaf sitting on your table. The wheat must be harvested, separated, ground into flour, combined with other ingredients, kneaded, allowed to rise, and baked. Human beings must take what God provides in nature and transform it into something we can eat.

So when we eat bread, the Torah requires us to stop and recognize both sides of that partnership: God provides the raw materials, and human beings provide the labor.

That leads directly into another major theme of Parshat Eikev.

Moshe warns the Jewish people about what will happen once they enter the Land of Israel and become successful. When people are poor, frightened, or desperate, it is easy to turn to God and say, “Please help me.”

The greater spiritual danger can come after we succeed.

Moshe warns:

“My power and the strength of my hand have made me this wealth.”

Of course you worked hard. Judaism does not deny human effort. You built the business. You went to work. You took the risks. You made the decisions.

But don’t convince yourself that you did it entirely alone.

You needed the health to work, the opportunities to succeed, the customers who walked through the door, and circumstances that allowed your efforts to bear fruit. Our responsibility is to work hard while recognizing that success is never entirely within our control.

I remember the story of a Jewish baker in Washington Heights. He was offered kosher certification, but there was a condition: he would have to close on Shabbat. He refused. He wanted his business open seven days a week.

But the business struggled.

Eventually, he agreed to close for Shabbat and received the certification. And afterward, he realized how foolish he had been. He had been working seven days a week, exhausting himself, convinced that every additional hour the store remained open was necessary for success. Yet after he began closing on Shabbat, the business prospered.

The lesson he took from it was simple: Take a day off. Trust that the world can continue without you for twenty-four hours.

And perhaps that is the connection running through the beginning of Eikev.

The mitzvah that seems too small to notice. The bread sitting on our table. The successful business we have built. These things become dangerous spiritually when they become so familiar that we stop seeing them.

We begin to assume they will simply be there tomorrow.

Eikev teaches us not to trample on the ordinary.

Sometimes the things we take most for granted are precisely the things for which we should be most grateful.

The Torah wants us to remember the past but to work in building a future. That is why Tu B’Av comes 6 days after Tisha B’Av. As long as we continue as Jews, we have won.

Tu B’Av: Building the Jewish Future

Now for a quick Devar Torah.

Today is Tu B’Av, the 15th of Av, a day the Mishnah describes as one of the happiest days of the Jewish year.

You might even call it the Jewish “Sadie Hawkins Day.” For those who remember the reference, Sadie Hawkins Day was the day when the women could go out and choose the men they wanted to marry.

The Mishnah describes something with a similar spirit. On Tu B’Av, the young women of Jerusalem would go out dressed in white, and the young men would come to meet them. But there was an important detail: the women wore borrowed clothing. The Mishnah explains that this was done so that no one who did not own fine clothing would be embarrassed.

Think about the message. When a young man looked at a young woman, he was not supposed to be looking at her wealth or her family’s social standing. The emphasis was on the person—her middot, her character and qualities. Is this someone with whom I can build a life?

The Mishnah says that there were no days as joyous for Israel as Yom Kippur and Tu B’Av. That seems remarkable. Why these two days?

Because both are about the future.

Yom Kippur tells us that our mistakes do not have to define us. We can repent, change, and begin again. Tu B’Av tells us that after tragedy and mourning, we still have to build.

And look where Tu B’Av falls on the calendar. Just six days earlier was Tisha B’Av, when we remembered the destruction of the Temples and the many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people.

Jewish history contains terrible chapters. We remember the Crusades, the expulsion from Spain, the Holocaust, and many other tragedies. We have an obligation to remember them.

But you cannot build a people by remembering tragedy alone.

A people must believe that it has a future.

And how do we create that future? We build families. We have children. And then we educate those children.

That connects beautifully with this week’s parsha, Eikev, which contains the second paragraph of the Shema. We are commanded to teach the words of Torah to our children—to speak about them when we sit at home and when we travel, when we lie down and when we rise.

In other words, Torah is not supposed to be something children encounter occasionally. It is supposed to be part of the rhythm of everyday life.

That is how a civilization survives.

The juxtaposition of Tisha B’Av and Tu B’Av therefore carries an extraordinary message. Tisha B’Av tells us to remember what was destroyed. Tu B’Av tells us to start building again.

Yes, terrible things happened to us. Yes, Jewish history contains suffering. But if all we teach the next generation is how much Jews have suffered, eventually someone will ask: Why bother?

Tu B’Av gives the answer.

Because we have a future.

We marry. We build homes. We have children. We educate them. We pass Torah and Jewish values from one generation to the next.

We remember the past not so that we can live in it, but so that we can learn from it and build something better.

Perhaps that is why Tu B’Av is one of the happiest days of the Jewish year. Happiness is not the absence of a painful past. It is the confidence that, despite that past, there is still a future worth building.

Something to think about.

We are commanded to love the stranger in our midst because we were strangers in Egypt. As long as the stranger accepts our societal norms then we are required to love them.

Loving the Stranger—and Belonging to a Society

Now for a quick devar Torah.

One of the striking commandments in this week’s parsha is: “You shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

The Torah is taking our own experience in Egypt and turning it into a moral obligation. We know what it is like to be outsiders. We know what it is like to be vulnerable in someone else’s land. Therefore, when a stranger lives among us, we have an obligation to treat that person with dignity, fairness, and even love.

But there is another side to the relationship.

The Torah and later Jewish law recognize different categories of outsiders. There is the ger, the stranger who lives among us, and there is the nokhri, the foreigner. Rabbinic law also discusses the ger toshav—a non-Jew who lives within Jewish society without becoming Jewish, but who accepts certain fundamental obligations. According to the major halachic view, this includes acceptance of the Seven Noahide Laws.

The principle is important: the stranger does not have to become Jewish in order to live among us and be treated with dignity. But living within a society also means accepting its basic legal and moral framework.

That reminds me of my mother. She came to America as a refugee from Europe in the early 1940s. At the time, there were German-speaking schools in New York, but my grandfather did not send her to one. He insisted that she attend an English-speaking school. Later, when she and my aunt went to high school to train as secretaries, again, the education was in English.

His reasoning was very simple: You are in America now. The language of business in America is English. America does not have to adapt itself to you; you have to learn how to function within America.

That did not mean abandoning who they were. It meant becoming participants in the society that had given them a home.

There is a lesson here about immigration and about society generally. A society has obligations toward the stranger. It must protect the stranger from oppression. It must administer justice fairly. It must recognize the stranger’s dignity.

But membership in a society is also a two-way street. The newcomer has obligations as well. You may disagree with particular policies. You may advocate for change. But you have to accept the basic rules by which the society governs itself.

In America, that fundamental framework is the Constitution and the rule of law.

In the Torah’s vision of the Land of Israel, the Torah is the foundation of the society. A non-Jew does not have to become Jewish, but living within that society means respecting its fundamental legal and moral order.

And perhaps that makes the Torah’s reminder about Egypt even more powerful. When our ancestors originally came to Egypt, they came because of famine. They were not trying to overthrow Egyptian civilization or impose their beliefs upon Egypt. They wanted to live there peacefully.

The tragedy began when Egypt stopped treating the stranger with dignity and turned the stranger into a threat to be feared, oppressed, and ultimately enslaved.

So the Torah gives us both sides of the equation: a society must treat the stranger with love and dignity, and those who join a society must respect the basic framework that holds that society together.

Welcoming the stranger does not require a society to surrender its identity. And joining a society does not require a person to surrender his own identity.

It requires mutual responsibility.

Something to think about.

The second paragraph of the Shema emphasizes that we have a communal responsibility to help. It is not enough that we are personally spiritual but that we are communally spiritual.

The Shema and the Strength of Community

Now for a quick Devar Torah.

This week, in Parshat Eikev, we encounter the second paragraph of the Shema. And there is an interesting difference between the first and second paragraphs.

The first paragraph speaks primarily in the singular: you shall love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

But the second paragraph shifts to the plural. Moshe is no longer speaking simply to the individual. He is speaking to us as a community.

That distinction is especially important when we remember what the Book of Deuteronomy is about. Moshe is preparing the Jewish people to enter the Land of Israel. After forty years in the wilderness, we are going to build a society. And a society cannot survive on individual spirituality alone.

We certainly have obligations as individuals. But we also have obligations to the people around us. If we want to create a holy society, each of us has to understand that what we do affects everyone else.

That reminds me of something Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he visited the United States in the 1830s and later wrote Democracy in America. Tocqueville was fascinated by the way Americans formed voluntary associations. When people wanted to accomplish something, they did not necessarily wait for the government or some aristocrat to do it for them. They organized themselves. They created religious congregations, charities, civic organizations, and associations of every kind.

People understood that they were part of a community and that when the community needed something, they had a responsibility to pitch in.

Tocqueville saw this habit of association as one of the great strengths of American democracy. Freedom did not mean simply being left alone. A free society depended upon people voluntarily accepting responsibility for one another and working together for the common good.

And that fits beautifully with the second paragraph of the Shema.

The Torah is telling us that spirituality cannot be only about me. It must also be about us. Yes, there are exceptional individuals who can maintain their spiritual lives entirely on their own, but most of us need a community. We need people around us who encourage us, challenge us, and remind us of the values by which we are supposed to live.

If everyone around us is doing the wrong thing, eventually it becomes much harder to keep doing the right thing. But when we build a community committed to certain values, we strengthen one another.

And then the Shema gives us another responsibility: teach these values to your children.

If a community wants to survive, its values cannot end with one generation. Our children have to learn that life is not simply about me—my wants, my success, my happiness. It is also about my family, my community, my society, and my nation.

Moshe is preparing the Jewish people to build a new society, and he is teaching us that holiness is not achieved only through private spiritual experience. Holiness is also created through the way we live together, the responsibilities we accept for one another, and the values we pass on to the next generation.

The first paragraph of the Shema teaches us about the commitment of the individual.

The second reminds us that the individual must become part of something larger.

Because if we want to build a holy society, it cannot just be about me.

It has to be about us.

Something to think about.