A separate personal growth or a unified national growth?

There is an incredibly difficult paradox in Judaism: On the one hand, Judaism promotes personal growth and attachment to God. Hundreds of books have been written on personal perfection in order to attain the highest levels of individual service to God. On the other hand, Judaism is first and foremost a national message. How are we to reconcile both these forces which often push in opposite sides? Where should our emphasis be?


In the fifth chapter of Pirkei Avot, the second mishna states:
"There were ten generations from Adam to Noah, to show how great was His patience, for every one of those generations provoked Him continually until he brought upon them the waters of the Flood."

God waited 10 long generations before bringing the flood to the world. During these 10 generations, the world always deserved to get the flood but God showed great patience and waited until the 10th generation to bring destruction.

The Next Mishna says something similar:
There were ten generations from Noah to Abraham, to show how great was His patience, for every one of those generations provoked Him continually until Abraham, our father, came and received the reward of them all.

Now, there is a fundamental question which needs to be asked to understand the deep message of this mishna. From a first superficial reading, we might think that everyone in the world during these 10 generations was evil, until Avraham finally came. But wait a minute... Who was living in these 10 generations? Who was living during each of these 10 generations, starting from the very first all the way to Avraham Avinu?

There were two huge talmidei chachamim who lived then: Shem Ve-Ever. Now these were not small time talmidei chachamim, these were the people who later became the teachers of Yaakov Avinu when he went to learn in “yeshiva”. So how is it possible that they did not have enough merit to save the world? What did Avraham have that they did not?

The answer is simple, yet very powerful.
Avraham Avinu was one who taught torah to the world. He went out and enhances the collective connection to God. Shem and Ever are heads of a yeshiva where they would teach the people who came, but would not go to do any outreach. Their main focus was on studying and deepening their connection to God and teaching those who came to learn from them. They did not worry of the collective.

Avraham Avinu understood that the whole point of torah is Tikkun Olam, the fixing of the world by bringing Gods presence in this world. Jewish Tradition tells us that God's presence in this world is achieved through the building of Am Israel as a holy nation on its land.

So, let us return to our dilemma: Are we to focus our energy on personal growth or collective growth?

The answer is simple: The purpose of our personal growth is to eventually contribute to the collective. In Judaism, one does not become pious by separating himself from the world and working on his own spiritual agenda. One does not become pious by avoiding the realities which could hurt him spiritually and let others deal with them. One becomes pious by confronting those realities head on, and connecting themselves to all types of Jews so that, collectively, we will be able to move forward towards a collective growth.

Of course, in order to properly affect the collective, one needs to work on his own personal self. However, one should not mistake his own personal perfection as the ideal goal of Judaism. A pious person who lives in a morally degraded world needs to ask himself why he did not contribute more to the betterment of that world.

In short, Judaism is not about separating yourself and putting yourself in an ideal world for your personal spiritual growth. Judaism is about turning the world around you into a world which will be ideal for all of our collective spiritual growth.