Mission Driven Peoplehood

When I was a yeshiva student at The Lander College for Men I remember a moment during my learning that later became transformative in defining the ways that I try to teach Torah to individuals and communities. I was sitting across from my hevruta and we were grappling with a particular piece of Talmud in Tractate Bava Kamma. In the midst of discussing a particular Tosafot I looked up from the page and asked my hevruta, "Why is this relevant?"

I did not ask that question because I was having a crisis in my learning. The contrary was true, I was immensely enjoying the study for the sake of the study itself but I nonetheless felt that something was missing. In that one moment a light shone in my mind that the job of the rabbinic community today is to reinvigorate Jewish life and learning with a mission and a vision. If we can connect the dots from Tanakh to Talmud to Halakhah and frame a picture of a Jewish purpose driven life then we can create a renaissance of Judaism in the modern age.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his newest work, Future Tense, sheds even more light on this initial aha moment I experienced years ago:

"... They mean that Jews must go back to the beginning and to the Hebrew Bible and ask again what it is to be Jewish, part of a singular people in a plural world, conscious at one and the same time of the uniqueness of identity and the universality of the human condition. What is it to be true to your faith and a blessing to others regardless of their faith? That is the Jewish question...

The single most important challenge facing the Jewish people, in Israel and the Diaspora, is to recover the Jewish story. It inspired George Eliot. It inspired Dr. King. The time has come for it to inspire Jews."

It is not always easy to derive meaning from every text that we delve into. Nonetheless, I am in complete agreement with Rabbi Sacks that recovering the Jewish story is the single most important challenge for the Jewish community. In what ways do you connect what you learn to the richness of the Jewish story, to the mission and vision of the Jewish people? How do you reignite your own Jewish imagination towards the great narrative of Am Yisrael?