[Avodah] Cave or Desert Island?

[Michael Makovi]

> it seems to me taht the best result for self-perfction is to be a hermit >in a cave of Sedert Island. No issue of LH ribbis ,etc. No hemda, et.c >no issue of bein adam lahaveira to worry about at all.
> Plus one can spend Gazillions of hours in studying Mussar and >achieve monumental levels of self-perfection?
> [And they say sarcasm does NOT work in cyberspace. Let's see!]
>RabbiRichWolpoe

I realize that you don't mean what you said. But since you posted it,
I assume you are trying to start some sort of discussion; I don't
imagine that you posted rhetorical shtiut for the mere reason of
"stam". So I'll answer anyway:

But the purpose of the Torah is to perfect the society! As Rabbi Aryeh
Carmel puts it in Masterplan, the aim of the Torah is not the
perfected individual, but rather the perfected society.

Any individual by himself can be righteous. And it's not because it's
easy. Rather, there's nothing to do! True, I haven't stolen or lied or
injured, but I couldn't if I wanted to! There's a saying, something
like "When there's nothing to steal, the thief regards his virtue as
real". So it isn't merely that the achievement was easily won. Rather,
there's no achievement at all whatsoever!

Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits touches on this, in several places - see for
example the chapter in G-d Man and History on the national aspect of
Judaism, and also somewhere in Essential Essays (I forget where). He
says that the Torah is not aimed at the individual, but rather at the
concretization of the deed in the larger world. This necessitates at
least a communal existence. (Furthermore, the Torah seeks to encompass
ALL aspects of life, including government and army and economy and the
like, so even a community is insufficient; an entire nation-state is
needed for the Torah's fulfillment). Christianity focuses on the
individual's salvation, and therefore Christianity is merely a
religion and not a people. But Judaism is a people, because it focuses
NOT on the individual, but davka on the people as an organic whole.
Thus Christianity said give G-d what is G-d's and Caesar what is
Caesar's, for what does Caesar have to do with a religion of the
individual? But Judaism says, everything is part of the religion, and
everything belongs to G-d.

Mikha'el Makovi