Being responsible for our lives and communities

In its description of the Jubilee year, the Torah tell us in 25:9 that the shofar is to be sounded throughout the land on Yom Kippur of Yovel.  Noting how we don’t blow shofar when Shabbos falls on Rosh Hashana because of carrying concerns, Netziv asks how can we blow the shofar on Yom Kippur, which is Shabbos-squared?

Quoting the Talmud (Rosh Hashana 30a), Netziv says that the Torah injunction obligates each individual to blow the shofar — and presumably, if everyone is blowing, no one needs to leave their house in order to do so.

What a profound thought: every person takes a direct grasp of his or her Jewish responsibility and the fulfillment of the task at hand as a personal mission.

This incredible event, when the collective Am Yisrael unites to create not just a moment together, but an experience to which each person contributes, is meant to last in their hearts and minds for 50 years, until the young people are old and the people born over the next 50 years can take charge of the Yovel Shofar sounding when it comes around again.

The theme of every person taking charge of personal responsibilities repeats itself in the works of some of the classic commentaries on the Torah.

When the Torah is first given, and the Aseret Hadibrot are declared, the section begins with a reminder to the community: “Atem r’item” (“You [all] saw what G-d did to the Egyptians”). And yet, as we’ll read on Shavuos, the Ten Commandments are all written in the singular, what you the individual should or should not do.

Ramban notes that this is a reminder to individuals that every person bears a personal responsibility for one’s deeds. No one should feel that he or she will fall into the destiny of the masses, and just as the community will share in a destiny, the individual can roll with the masses and neglect personal obligations. Each person bears a personal, and in turn a communal, responsibility.

Every person is faced with a choice. I can do my mitzvah because I am personally commanded. Or I can do it as a member of a community.

A community should always strive to be greater than the sum of its parts.