[Avodah] Like one person, with one heart

[Micha Berger]

>From my blog
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2008/11/like-one-person-with-one-heart.shtml>.
I had to write /something/.

-micha

Like one person, with one heart

For the past day and a half, all Jewish eyes were on Mumbai, formally
known as Bombay, named for two Hindu godesses. Nine popular tourist
sites were attacked, locations that attracted many American and British
citizens. Nine tourist sites... and one Chabad House.

Jews around the world suddenly took an interest in IBN, CNN's partner
in India. Streaming audio or video available live, listening to the
reporter telling the story from outside. Occasionally interupting her
reporting to duck down or tell her cameraman to shut off his lights as
shots fire out.

Why the Jews?

Why *again* the Jews?

Once upon a time, all of humanity got along. We used that beautiful
unity improperly, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with
its top in heaven, and we will make ourselves famous; lest we get
scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." And Hashem
responds, "Yes, they are one nation and they have one language, and
this is what they begin to do..." (Bereishis 11:4,6)

There were few families who did not participate. One of them was that of
Avraham. (Others include Malkhitzedeq / Sheim, Eiver, and Ashur the
forefather of Assyria, who thereby merited the Torah script, Ashuris.)
Avraham refused a unity committed to evil.

And 502 years later his children stood at Mount Sinai. "and Israel
vayichan, camped there, under the mountain." (Shemos 19:2) The Mekhilta
(quoted by Rashi) notes the use of the singular for the verb, as though
Israel were an individual, and writes, "ke'ish echad beleiv echad -- Like one
person, with one heart." And with that moment of unity, we merited to
be the recipients of the Torah.

Unlike the unity of the Egyptians six weeks earlier, at the Red Sea.
"and here, Egypt is noseia', chasing after them." Also with a singular
verb. And one of Rashi's explanations is "beleiv echad ke'ish echad --
with one heart, like one person." In opposite order, first the heart,
than the unity like a single person.

The Egyptians had no inherent unity. They had a single heart, a single
desire and goal, and they unified behind that goal. Had they lived
long enough for that goal to evaporate they would have once again
been divided. The giving of the Torah, however, required unity as
a precondition, not a consequence. As we say in the Hagaddah about
the evil son's use of the word you when asking "What is this work for
you?" "Since he took himself out of the community, he denied the essence
[of Judaism]." Our doxology is not "Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One",
it first begins "Hear Israel".

The "ish echad", the unity of the people, precedes the "leiv echad", the
common mission. Perhaps this is why Rabbi Aqiva's students passed away
in the period of Omer in particular, in the period of transition between
conditional unity and love based on a common goal, and the inherent
unity as a precondition to Sinai. A utilitarian unity is not the basis
of respect, it's unity so as to use the other. (In this case, as a tool
for one's own learning.) And so the students who died "because they did
not show respect one for the other" were sentenced during that time in
our calendar; they didn't survive the transition from Pesach to Shavu'os.

    It is not because you are more plentiful than other nations that
    Hashem holds you dear and chose you; for you are few from among the
    nations. Rather, from the love of G-d of you, and from His keeping
    the promise...
					    -Devarim 7:7-8

Cheisheq, holding someone dear, is described as something that can be
conditional (in this case, on our size). Ahavah, true love, is inherent,
without reason or cause. Ahavah without an adjective is ahavas chinam.

Terrorism is an echoing the generation of the Tower of Babel's call, "let
us make ourselves a reputation". When they rise up they are unified like
the Eqyptians. Not inherently, but functionally, behind a common cause. In
Babel, this expressed itself as the first totalitarian government, as
Pirqei deR' Eliezer describes it, if a person fell off the tower, worked
proceded. If a brick fell, they mourned. R' Hirsch describes this as the
first Totalitarian government -- humanity was subdued to the cause. In
terrorism, this is expressed in a willingness to kill innocents, to die,
even to raise one's own children with dreams of becoming "shuhada",
martyrs for the cause.

Why again the Jews?

Because in Judaism, unity is inherent, love is to be unconditional,
and the value of a cause defined by the value it brings to humanity.

Why again the Jews?

Because when there is a terror attack in some exotic city, and the fate
of two people I never meet hangs in the balance, everything stops. Jews
in every time zone track the news obsessively. We are Benei Yisrael,
the Children of Israel, siblings. All our petty (and perhaps not so
petty) squabbles forgotten. Little Moishe is out safely?! Thank G-d. His
parents? "About these I cry; my eyes, my eyes, spill water."

This Shabbos (which began already in Mumbai), Moishe turned two and
became an orphan. May the Omnipresent comfort the family amongst all of
us mourners of Tziyon and Yerushalayim.