Sometimes, however, we get so bogged down by our own needs and responsibilities we forget that to be part of Hashem’s nation means to share His devotion, compassion, and love with every Jew, particularly those who need it most.
In that light, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky once drew particular attention to the fact that kabbalas haTorah was experienced not by individuals but by an entire nation, millions of people who stood at Har Sinai with a singular sense of purpose and destiny.
They journeyed from Rephidim and they arrived in the desert of Sinai, and they encamped in the desert, and Israel encamped there opposite the mountain (Shemos 19:2). And Israel encamped there: [using the singular form, denoting that they encamped there] as one man with one heart (Rashi, ibid).
Unity and communal connectivity are prerequisites for receiving the Torah. They speak directly to the Torah’s fundamental status as a national guide, a means through which we learn to better interact and appreciate one another. They also serve as the basis for our own personal acquisition of its wisdom. “The knowledge of the Torah can be acquired only in association with others” (Berachos 63b).
Perhaps this is why the period that directly precedes our receiving of the Torah has come to be identified with the commandments characterized as bein adam l’chaveiro (interpersonal matters).
As we know, one of the defining aspects of the sefirah period is the expression of mourning in commemoration of the death of Rabbi Akiva’s 24,000 students during the early-second century CE. Yevamos 62b states that all of these great men died between Pesach and Shavuos because they did not treat each other with ample reverence.
At first glance this punishment seems unusually severe. Certainly it is of great importance to treat each individual respectfully; still, where do we ever find that weakness in terms of interpersonal regard is punishable by death?
Further complicating matters is the parallel account of this event recorded in Bereishis Rabbah 61:3. The midrash states that the reason for their deaths was not a lack of respect but rather that they “looked grudgingly” at (i.e. were envious of) each other.
This problem of envy would later become so clear to Rabbi Akiva that when he started teaching again with a small group of new students he first warned them, “My sons, the earlier ones died only because they begrudged each other [knowledge of the Torah]. See to it that you do not act similarly.”
Duly counseled, these new students, who included such future luminaries as Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Shimon, Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Yose, achieved such collective greatness that they “filled all of Israel with Torah.”
The Ponevezher Rav, zt”l, explains that there is no conflict in these different explanations for the death of the 24,000 students. Rather, they express two aspects of the same issue. The more visible component was the lack of respect between students. But the basis for that disrespect was an inability to tolerate each other’s greatness, feeling it somehow took away from their own rightful status.
Rabbeinu Yonah, writing in Shaarei Teshuvah (3:160), explains that a person can fulfill all of the commandments to the fullest degree and still hate Hashem if it bothers him when he sees others serving Hashem at least as well as he is. Such a person is not serving his Maker out of a true desire to fulfill His will, but rather for the purpose of enhancing his own personal stature.
This is what occurred with Rabbi Akiva’s students. The grudge they held against one other was caused by jealousy, an inability to truly appreciate greatness in their colleagues. This in turn impacted their willingness to treat each other with the requisite degree of respect.
