By Kevin Wolf
I have always been frustrated with team sports: to excel in team sports, one needs to be in sync with the entire team. I find it to be very challenging that some people on the team want to have a serious game and others want to play a more lax game, and this often leads to frustration and eventually arguments; therefore, growing up I typically opted for the tennis team, snowboard club and mathletes. All of these were groups where I could work at my own pace while being part of a supportive, but not intertwined collective.
Rabbi Ethan Tucker titled his class to the Nachshon fellows: “Is Judaism an Individual or Team Sport?” The shiur kept coming back to the question of whether Judaism is a “sport” where I have to care about my fellows’ success or can I simply focus on my own “statistics”. This class was not the first time I have been prompted with this difficult question and I have consistently oscillated between the two poles of the debate. Rabbi Tucker is a brilliant scholar and when walking into the session that morning I was not ready to revisit this question which has flustered me for years, so after hearing the prompt I immediately began to have a bit of an existential crisis.
The root of this existential crisis is rooted in a few inspirational speakers I heard in high school who told me to think bigger and be a role model, but during my days at Yeshivat Orayta this question came into full force. One of the first books I read in yeshiva was A Letter in the Scroll by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in which he develops the theme that a letter only has meaning within a word and a word within a sentence… and a Sefer Torah is only kosher if every letter is included. The metaphor continued that we need to be “kosher letters” who are active in continuing to write this epic story of Jewish peoplehood. This book propelled me to begin to think seriously and critically about my Jewish identity and the responsibility I should feel towards my people. A few months later, I visited Poland with my yeshiva and remember sitting in a death camp near a memorial for the hero Janusz Korczak, who truly lived beyond himself. While meditating there, I concretized my decision to stay in Israel for another year to be a role model for the next first year students, be a better teacher for the students at Michigan and be a more knowledgeable Jew for learning with my siblings, my future kids and myself.
Staying another year for me was a wonderful decision and has paid great dividends at Michigan. Once in Michigan I followed on my commitments and turned my house into a quasi-Jewish organization called FRAת (facebook.com/frasernity), where I have run numerous forms of programming like a weekly “Shiur with Beer”. Thankfully, the events have been successful on campus and I find it very fulfilling to run, but there are shortcomings. There are not people who I can learn on a high level with, I don't meet many people who I would seriously consider dating, and generally people are non-committal in their Jewish practice. These drawbacks are not new realizations and were what I expected. During my second year in yeshiva, I deliberated staying in Israel to avoid these difficulties, but chose to go because I knew I could contribute to Michigan. Now, I am back studying in Israel and have fallen back in love with the land and have people to learn with, girls to date and am surrounded by Jews with more consistent Jewish practices.
Last year, I read a biography on the Lubavitcher Rebbe called Rebbe by Joseph Telushkin which profoundly impacted me. I was awed by the Rebbe’s wisdom, foresight and boldness and came to respect him, his thought and the movement he pioneered. After being wowed by this figure and well into the book, I arrived at Chapter 22, titled “When It Is Wrong to Make Aliyah”. I waited a week before daring to read it because I suspected what it would say. The Rebbe called on everyone to fix their own communities and said a soldier cannot abandoned his post, so he forbade not only many rabbis from making aliyah, but also lay leaders. This was not out of a lack of belief in the State of Israel, but for his love of the Jewish people and deep belief that one cannot abandon one Jew and let them fall by the wasteside. The level of selflessness displayed by Chabad puts me to shame and demonstrates what living for the Jewish people really looks like.
Although I usually cannot properly engage with this question of individual centric vs people centric life, I was able to comfortably explore the question within Rabbi Tucker’s shiur because we were dialoguing around sources. I thrive off sources and believe they provide us a healthy medium for thinking about values and for trying to align one’s will with the narrative they tell. Before the shiur, I knew there was a mitzvah to rebuke your friend for bad behavior and that each person has a responsibility for their own 4 amot of halacha, but I was unaware of the halachic ramifications that this existential question poses. This debate reinvigorated my interest in the subject and I have begun to research other halachic sources regarding making aliyah vs staying in your community, breaking a commandment to help someone else’s observance and what obligations does one have beyond himself.
Personally, it's not easy to balance my desire to have a high quality Jewish life with my feeling of being compelled to be in a place where I would be able to contribute to my kinsmen more. Neither the Rebbe nor Rabbi Sacks have lived in Israel and it's difficult for me to see myself happier anywhere but here in Israel. The sources helped me ground myself in how this debate has manifested in our literature and I will continue to seek clarity on this issue.
