[Avodah] Do Not Separate Yourself and Do Not Believe in Yourself (for a while)...

[Cantor Wolberg]

Very interestingly, Hillel is often quoted with: "Al tifrosh min  
hatzibbur"  Do not separate yourself from the community. However, what  
follows immediately is "v'al ta'amin b'atzm'cha ad yom mos'cha."  Do  
not believe in yourself until the day you die.

This is very curious. We are always taught to believe in ourselves. So  
what's this about "Do NOT believe in yourself until the day you die."  
Does that mean that we can only believe in ourselves the actual DAY of  
our death. That's rather impractical seeing that most of us don't know  
when that day will come.

My take on it is as follows: It's no accident that "Al tifrosh..."  
precedes "v'al ta'amin..."  First and foremost we are part of the  
community. With that in mind, we should not focus on ourselves and  
hence, to assure that we remain with the tzibbur, we are admonished  
not to "believe" in ourselves. Also, we should really only believe in  
the Almighty. The day we die is the day we will not be able to join  
the community. So at that time, we can believe in ourselves because  
hopefully we are going to bigger and better heights and believing in  
ourselves at that moment is the culmination of years of struggling to  
overcome our yetzer hara and hopefully we will have succeeded and can  
then believe in ourselves.

ri
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