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<DIV><SPAN class=214205114-28042008><FONT face=Arial>I found the following of
great interest especially as it parallels some of R' Amital's
writings.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><SPAN class=214205114-28042008><FONT face=Arial>KT<BR>Joel
Rich</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>
<P class=MsoNormal
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align=center><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: 'Impact','sans-serif'; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Courier New'">Ha-Rav
Shlomo Aviner </SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal
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align=center><U><SPAN
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style="mso-spacerun: yes"></SPAN></SPAN></U><U><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><?xml:namespace
prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
/><o:p></o:p></SPAN></U></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
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align=center><STRONG><U><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 16pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><o:p><SPAN
style="TEXT-DECORATION: none"></SPAN></o:p></SPAN></U></STRONG></P><STRONG><U><SPAN
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<P class=MsoNormal
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align=center><STRONG><U><SPAN
style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; FONT-SIZE: 16pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 115%; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus">Rav
Kook's approach –vs- focus on the individual</SPAN></U></STRONG><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><FONT
size=3><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">[From
"Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah – Parashat Acharei Mot 5768 - </SPAN><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Andalus">Translated by Rafael
Blumberg]<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><SPAN style="COLOR: black"><FONT
size=3>Question: Perhaps, with our generation being so focused on the
individual, Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook's approach, which focused on the good of
the group at large, has become outdated? Perhaps he's no longer so relevant and
Chabad or Breslav (which focus more on the betterment of the individual) are
better? The fact is that those two groups are winning over the youth.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>Answer: Your
analysis is correct except for one detail: It applies not just in this
generation but throughout all the generations. People have always been more
interested in themselves. They've always had an exaggerated self-love, and
they've always had an evil impulse which said, "Me! Me!" I am not against
self-love. After all it says, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Vayikra 19:18).
That's a sign that you've got to love yourself, too. Yet I'm talking about
exaggerated self-love. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>What has changed,
however, is that this proclivity has become a central ideal, replacing the ideal
of extricating oneself from egocentrism. Indeed, during the past 200-300 years,
the individualist bent has been becoming stronger in the West, and we are being
dragged along, like a tail, as we proclaim, "I set MYSELF before me always." We
forget that there is only One Being who can truly say "I", and that is G-d, and
we are supposed to respond to Him, "Here we are!" <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><FONT size=3>Obviously, it isn't so
that Rav Kook only focused on the group. Only people who haven't learned his
writings make this claim. Rav Kook was not just interested in the group, and not
just interested in the individual, but in the Torah, which is concerned with
them both, for each needs the other. Or, more precisely, as Rav Kook's son, Rav
Tzvi Yehudah put it, "the individual, from within the group and for the sake of
the group". See Mesillat Yesharim at the end of Chapter 19.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
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style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>Individualistic
worship of a divinity existed before Avraham. Idolatry is likewise
individualistic, and similar to the contemporary language of the New Age,
flowing out of the pagan Far East, which makes reference to "the god within me".
Avraham represents the focus on the group. His worship constitutes an enormous
step upward. Slowly we ascended from the private altars to the universal Beit
Ha-Mikdash. Whoever talks now about individualism in worship is regressing to
the primitivism of before Avraham. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>The truth is that
the Exile involved a focus on the individual as well. Mine is mine and yours is
yours. Even its spirituality was private, with people thinking, "My place in
Heaven is mine alone (see Rav Kook's Orot 111). My worship is mine alone. My
emotions are mine alone." Yet that approach represents sickness, not health, a
band-aid, not an ideal approach. The Master of the Universe decided that we
should be returning to the concern with the aggregate. Out of that concern, we
have done many things: building up the Land, the return to Zion, the
establishment of a Jewish State, and especially our army, the epitome of concern
for the public good. When there is the brotherhood of fighters, the one is ready
to die for the other. <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>We are becoming more
and more concerned with the general fate. Some explain our Sages' utterance that
"the son of David will not come until money disappears from pockets" (Sanhedrin
97a) as meaning, "until focus on the individual ceases." How very fortunate we
are that we have come back from the concern for the individual! <BR>How forlorn
the western world – and those amongst us who ape it – for being so focused on
the individual. Things there are so bad that people don't get married, let alone
stay married. Marriage is likewise man's main way of extricating himself from
focus on the individual.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><o:p><FONT
size=3> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><FONT size=3>Indeed, it is seemingly
a pleasant thing to be focused on oneself. The ancient Greeks have a legend
about a fellow named Narcissus who stared at his reflection in the water, and he
was so enchanted by it that he couldn't take his eyes off it. Ultimately he put
down roots and became a flower – the narcissus. Freud created from this an
emotional prototype, the narcissist, who finds all his satisfaction from
preoccupation with himself. By contrast, our holy Sages told about a boy who
came to fill a pitcher of water from a spring. His evil impulse took hold of him
and showed him his beautiful hair, seeking to deprive him of the World to Come.
He immediately took on the vow of a Nazir so that at the end of the month he
would cut all his hair off (Nedarim 9b). <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>Indeed, focusing on
the public good is harder than focusing on one's own needs, as Rav Kook taught,
"True, public-welfare-oriented Torah observance is much harder than
individual-focused observance" (Ma'amarei HaRe'iyah, page 174). Yet such is the
unique divine service of the Jewish People. Therefore, "a person must constantly
extricate himself from his individualistic mindset which fills his whole being,
rendering him totally preoccupied with his individual fate. Such is the opposite
of the way of G-d, imprinted on the Assembly of Israel…When a person focuses
constantly and totally on his own interests and welfare that counts as
'following the ways of the Amorites'. It is not Jewish, and we are better off
viewing it as something forbidden and out of bounds " (Ein Aya, Shabbat 2,
127-128). <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="TEXT-JUSTIFY: inter-ideograph; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; DIRECTION: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><SPAN
style="COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Andalus"><BR><FONT size=3>"When we were in our
Land, and the Temple stood, it was our center, our place of unity, hence private
altars were forbidden, even though they could have served as a means of Jews
uniting in smaller groups. Yet that desire by a small group would bring
separation from the larger center, and the nation's unity would be nullified.
Only from that national unity can G-d's ultimate will be realized." (Ein Aya,
Berachot 1, 76).<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P></FONT><FONT
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