Word Prompt – KLAL – Ariel Rackovsky

A few weeks before Rosh Hashanah this year, I had the honor of picking up Rav Lipa Geldwerth, rav of Khal Kol Torah in Brooklyn, from the airport. Rav Geldwerth traveled to Dallas to speak at a Daf Yomi siyum of Seder Nezikin. Rav Geldwerth is a masterful speaker and a remarkable talmid chacham, and I took the opportunity to ask him what subject he would be addressing in his Shabbos Shuva drasha.

Rav Geldwerth said that he has noticed over the years that many people are prepared to throw themselves into klal work – volunteering for schools and chesed organizations, serving on boards and in leadership positions in communal institutions and causes. Often, people feel that this kind of volunteerism exempts them from the need to tend to their personal development, their spiritual lives and their interior world. Rav Geldwerth is correct, and not just about lay people; it's as true (if not more so) about rabbis and other "professional Jews," who work for the community as their vocation and calling. We learn in the 13 hermeneutical principles of Rabbi Yishmael: From a rule followed by a detail, which is in turn followed by a rule, one may infer only what is similar to the detail.

Literally, this means that when the Torah gives two general statements that sandwich a specific example of them, it is the specific example that defines the scope of the general statements. Homiletically, though, we can render this statement as follows: The quality of the work a person does for the Klal is only evaluated based on what kind of a person they are as individuals, and how much work they are prepared to put into themselves.