<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">Very interestingly, Hillel is often quoted with: "Al tifrosh min hatzibbur" <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'"> </font><i>Do not separate yourself from the community</i>. However, what follows immediately is "v'al ta'amin b'atzm'cha ad yom mos'cha." <i>Do not believe in yourself until the day you die</i>. </span></span></font><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">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. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">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.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;">ri</span></div></body></html>