What Judaism says about community
Judaism is unusually specific about the group. Several of its central practices cannot be carried out alone, and one instruction is simply not to withdraw. The nine entries below include the warm parts and the difficult parts — what you owe people you did not choose, and what disagreement inside a community is for. Each links to its entry and its source.
Al Tifrosh Min HaTzibbur — Do Not Separate Yourself from the Community
Hillel's instruction is blunt: do not separate yourself from the community. Belonging is treated as an obligation rather than a preference, including in the years when the community is hard going.
Pirkei Avot 2:4
Hillel's Three Questions — Do Not Separate From the Community
Three questions in a row hold self and others in tension without resolving it. If I am not for myself, who will be — and if I am only for myself, what am I.
Pirkei Avot 1:14
Lo Levad — Not Alone — Jewish Solidarity
All Israel is responsible for one another. Taken literally, it makes another person's failure partly your problem.
Babylonian Talmud, Shevu'ot 39a
Gemilut Chasadim — Acts of Loving Kindness
Acts of loving kindness are named as one of three things the world stands on. What is meant is the unpaid kind: time, attention, turning up when someone is ill or bereaved.
Pirkei Avot 1:2
Davening — Jewish Communal Prayer
Prayer three times a day, structured to be said alongside others. Parts of the liturgy require a quorum, so the practice cannot be completed in private.
Psalm 55:18
Machloket L'Shem Shamayim — Argument for Heaven's Sake
Disagreement is not treated as a failure of community but as a practice within it, provided it is for the sake of heaven. The Talmud preserves the losing arguments instead of deleting them.
Pirkei Avot 5:17
Lashon Hara — The Prohibition of Evil Speech
Damaging speech about someone is a serious offence even when what is said is true. The concern is what such talk does to the group, not only to the person discussed.
Babylonian Talmud, Arakhin 15b
Ruth — Loyalty and the Stranger
Ruth is an outsider who chooses the people rather than being born into them. The tradition makes her the ancestor of its royal line, which says something about who ends up counting as inside.
Ruth 1:16
L'Dor V'Dor — From Generation to Generation
Each generation receives the tradition and is responsible for handing it on. Community is arranged along time as well as across a room.
Deuteronomy 6:7
Read together, these describe a community you cannot fully opt out of and cannot fully control. The argument is permitted, the gossip is not, and the outsider who commits is let all the way in. It is a demanding arrangement, and the entries above are frank about the cost.