Six

How to bootstrap a Jewish community?

You need to focus on people. Not on community. Not on infrastructure. Not on headlines. Not on the masses.

You need to focus on people. Individual people. People’s needs. People’s desires, hopes, aspirations, upsets, and eccentricities.

Moses chased a lone sheep. Moses was recognized for that act. Moses was charged with leading the Jewish people out of Egypt. Ultimately, Moses created the community called the Jewish nation.

Ponder.

If he was focused on the masses, he would have calculated that the lone sheep was a statistic to be written off on the margin. The masses need to have their needs met. Their safety ensured. Chasing a lone sheep put that all in jeapordy.

But he wasn’t focused on the masses. He was focused on caring for each sheep. Making sure each of their needs were met.

A lone wayward sheep too.

Paradoxically, the only real way to care for a large group is to focus on the individual and to be ready - at times - to ignore the group for the sake of the individual.

The only way this calculus makes sense (it doesn’t) is by positing that it is a paradigm, a stance vis-a-vis the community, that allows the community to feel secure even when their needs are not obviously being met, so long as they know that you are off chasing an individual.

One of greatest desires of every human (or animal), and certainly their motivation for participating in a community, is the need to belong. The physical safety, the secure access to food and resources, the comfort found in others, the alleviation of psychic loneliness, all of these come with belonging to a tribe, flock, or community.

A community of individuals that knows that they won’t be written off as a statistic should they take a wrong turn, is a group of people that can feel secure in their sense of belonging.

They perceive, consciously or not, that their leader has the interests of every individual in mind, including the most vulnerable, and they feel that it is a community where they will always belong.

This is how to build community.

One person at a time.

Until you reach critical mass.

And never lose sight of the person.

Never lose sight of your people.