Community and Individuality

Sometimes it all seems so hopeless. You can feed a hungry child, yet millions more remain hungry. For every good deed you do, so many evil deeds are committed . . .

You can't build a lasting building out of half-baked bricks. But people, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, are not bricks

If the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel each brought the same gift in honor of the Tabernacle’s inauguration, why does the Torah repeat the 35-item list twelve times, making Naso the longest Parshah in the Torah? There is a lesson here, says the ...

"If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?" The laws of the Passover Offering contain an important insight into the eternal question, conflict and symbiosis of self and community

Since the universe is basically words (see Genesis 1), everything -- marriage, community building, international relations, cosmic harmony -- is a question of proper grammar

Do we? Does G-d? No and yes. We may find, however, when we begin to reveal ourselves more deeply, that a new "companion" is sitting next to us at one of those unending committee meetings

It had always seemed to me that, for most of us, many of the Torah’s laws restricting relations between the sexes are a sort of collective punishment for the sins of a few. But recently my perspective has changed . . .

The Zohar states that “When the tzaddik departs, he is to be found in all worlds, more than during his lifetime.” Now this needs to be understood. For, granted that he is to be found increasingly in the supernal worlds, because he ascends to there; but ...

How can an individual, with his small contribution, feel like a vital part of the collective effort?

Can a person’s sense of individuality be suppressed? Should it be suppressed?