There was an old man who would walk along the beach every morning before work. He was walking along the shore early one morning after a big storm had passed, and found the beach littered with starfish. As he continued further down the shore, he noticed a small boy picking up shells from the shore and gently throwing them into the ocean. As he got closer, he realized that the boy was actually walking through the of starfish that had been washed up during the storm. As he came across each starfish, he would gently pick it up and throw it back into the ocean.
Amused, the man approached the child and asked, “Young boy, why are you doing this? Look at this beach. It’s littered with thousands of starfish; you can’t save all of them. What difference can you make?”
The young boy looked down, momentarily crushed. But after a few seconds, he bent down again, picked up another starfish, and with all his might, hurled it into the ocean. He smiled up at the man and said, “I made a difference to that one!”
The old man paused, intrigued, and after a few moments he joined the boy in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and within a short time all the starfish were saved.
Individuality vs. Uniqueness
This story relates to a fundamental theme in Judaism. On the one hand, we all believe that we are unique and special. On the other hand, we sometimes struggle to experience our individuality, feeling almost lost in the crowd. If you’ve ever walked the streets of a crowded city, surrounded by thousands of people, you may have felt almost invisible. We live on a planet with over seven billion people; planet earth itself is a speck in the universe. If our planet is so infinitesimally small relative to the universe, and within our planet, each of us is only one of more than seven billion people, how are we supposed to feel special and unique?
Compounding this difficulty is the Torah’s emphasis on unity and community. Countless Torah themes and halachos are centered around the value of the community (tzibbur/klal) and how one must dedicate themselves to the greater good of the Jewish people. If everyone is unique and individually important, how can we understand the concept of unity and the need to work toward becoming part of something bigger than ourselves? Must we sacrifice our uniqueness and individuality for the sake of the “klal,” for the greater good of the community? Many feel as though Judaism aims to remove one’s individual identity and sense of self, instead training us to be a uniform group of people, solely committed to Hashem and Klal Yisrael. What is the deeper Jewish approach to this struggle and conflict between individuality and community, between uniqueness and being part of a unified group?
Yaakov’s Berachos
Yaakov Avinu famously gives each of his sons a beracha before his death. One might expect Yaakov to leave his children with words of love, positivity, and encouragement. It is therefore quite surprising to see that many of Yaakov’s “berachos” appear to be exactly the opposite. His words for Shimon and Levi seem to qualify as outright rebuke. How are we to understand the meaning of this? In order to grasp the meaning behind Yaakov’s berachos, as well as the relationship between individuality and community, let us study the concepts of order and structure, based on the ideas of Rav Eliyahu Dessler.
Levels of Order
Rav Eliyahu Dessler, a prominent twentieth century Jewish thinker and author of Michtav Me’Eliyahu, writes about three different levels of order (Michtav Me’Eliyahu, vol. 1, p. 92).
- The first is order for the sake of order, which is a practical form of order, where pieces simply come together in an orderly, organized structure.
- The second is where the pieces within a structure are organized in such a way that it provides practical use and accessibility.
- The third is where the pieces within the structure come together in such a way that the ensuing result transcends the sum of the parts.
Let us explore each form of order in further depth.
Order Itself
The world we live in is exquisitely structured and ordered down to the finest details. Anyone who has studied any form of science has gotten a taste of the beauty and sophistication of our world’s order. Every human being has an inner order, which allows our bodies to maintain homeostasis. The order of our world has many important implications and applications as well.
Every person’s inner order is expressed as their outer order as well. If you are riding on a train where the sound of train wheels on the tracks is making a continuous and steady noise, and you are in a happy and excited internal state, you will joyfully hum along to the beat of the noise. However, if you are in a bad mood, that very same noise will drive you crazy. In other words, your internal order affects how you perceive your external order. This goes even further, as many people will actively create a parallel between their internal and external order.
To illustrate, if you have a harmonious and peaceful internal state, and you come home to find a chair slightly out of place in your dining room, you’ll gently put it back in its proper place. However, if you come home stressed in an internal wreck, then not only won’t you put that chair back in its proper place, you might throw the entire dining set into disarray, paralleling your internal chaotic state. We like to have our external state mirror our internal state. This is why the baalei machshava often say that you can tell a lot about a person’s internal state based on how neat their room is. An organized room reflects an organized mind. Another fascinating form of external order reflecting internal order is music and art. All forms of music and art are ways for people to express their internal reality into some form of external expression. Studying the evolution of music and art reveals much about the evolution of the human internal state.
Order for Practical Benefit
The second level of order is where something is ordered in such a way that it yields practical benefits. For example, a library is organized in such a way that gives one access to a tremendous amount of information; the order facilitates this accessibility. Rav Elchanan Wasserman asked, is it better to have twenty thousand books or twenty books? While many are quick to say twenty thousand, the answer is not so simple. It actually depends; do you have an organizing index? If you have twenty thousand unorganized books, they will be nearly useless. You won’t be able to find a single book you are looking for. With the twenty books, you will at least have access to each of them. However, if you have a system of organization for the twenty thousand books, then of course it is better to have twenty thousand books.
The same is true of all forms of wisdom (chochma), especially Torah wisdom. A truly wise person, in any field, will pursue the underlying principles and concepts, not the endless facts and applications. As the Ramchal explains in several places (such as Daas Tevunos and the introduction to Derech Hashem), this is because the underlying principles contain all the facts and applications within them. An organized and sophisticated thinker will always look for the fundamental concepts and principles that contain and explain all the expressed phenomena and details. If someone asked you whether you wanted a hundred-dollar bill or ten thousand pennies, which would you prefer? Obviously, the single bill, because it contains all ten thousand pennies within it but is a great deal easier to carry around. The same is true for the principles and applications of wisdom. Every single principle contains endless applications, details, and facts. One who is wise will seek out the principle; one who isn’t will be satisfied with facts and applications.
Whenever we learn a Torah topic or a sugya (topic) in Gemara, we always start by looking for the source of this concept in the Torah. This is because the Torah source will account for all the applications within the topic. Learning Torah is about tracing things back to their source and understanding the ideas and principles of life itself, learning how to understand and align ourselves with Hashem’s will. The same is true in the scientific world; physicists are looking for the “GUT,” the grand unifying theory that can account for all expressed physical phenomena. (They are now stuck between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and are attempting to find one theory that synthesizes both. Of course, Judaism has been teaching the true grand unifying theory since its inception – namely, “Hashem echad,” Hashem’s absolute oneness.)
The Highest Order
The third form of order and structure is fundamentally different from the first two; in this level of order, pieces come together in such a way that they create something greater than the sum of their parts. It’s where the parts come together into a oneness in a way that creates something that transcends the parts themselves. (In neurobiology and physics, this would be referred to as “emergent phenomena.”)
Take a radio for example; it is composed of numerous parts and components that, on their own, are practically worthless. However, when these same pieces are organized in exactly the right way, something emanates from them: a radio signal. This type of order is completely different from the first two forms of order. When a library is organized, you are still left with nothing more than the books on the shelves; and when the library is disorganized, each book still maintains its individual value. However, within this third level of order, each individual piece is worthless when all the pieces are not unified, and transcendent when the pieces are organized properly and connected.
This level of order – a unity that transcends the sum its parts – is a deep and fundamental topic. In our next article, we will delve deeper into this topic in order to build a paradigm through which we can answer our original questions. In the meantime, may we all be inspired to continue to embark on the journey of becoming our ultimate selves!
