We are interested in the circumcision of a concept. What exactly is a ‘community’? Are not communities founded upon commonalities? But what about a community of those with nothing in common? Some would suggest that this could even be the case with the Jewish community. As the Noble laureate Elias Cannetti once put it: “Jews are different from other people, but in reality, they are most different from each other.” Consequently, it is not surprising that this question strikes deep into the heart of Jewish mystical reflections upon our capacity to relate to the diversity of others within communal life.

What hold “us” together? How can we identify socially? Is it only on the basis of similar interests? Do we need to recognize similarities between people to feel a bond with them? Does our ‘sameness’ win the day?

Reading the textures of society, we sometimes find so much division that we doubt that these cracks may ever be healed. Our intuition is often to simply paint over them. This is the logic of sameness which declares that you are like me and therefore we are one and the same or minimally in this trench of life ‘together’.

But what about the equally important case where we celebrate differences? There is much to be said about a logic of difference where no two people exactly resemble one another. Each person is non-exchangeable. This manner of thinking asserts that: ‘My life and experience are non-transferable’ or ‘to know you, I would have to be you, etc…’.

In a strange twist of thought, we might entertain the idea that the only (true) commonality in the community is that we are all different. Difference is universal.

Yet this difference is not only characteristic of our relationship with others—whether it be family, friends, or strangers. We already exhibit some degree of difference on the inside between ‘me and myself’. To see ‘oneself as an other’ opens up the possibility of a community that is populated by versions of oneself. This might be akin to seeing a time stamp on each iteration of ‘self’ that we collect and catalog throughout the course of life.

Who am I? Maybe I am the aggregate of all of these versions of myself which are temporally dispersed? There is the person I used to be in the past, the person I am presently, and the person that I am to become in the future. This general division of time already presupposes that I am the unity of these three time dimensions. “I” am stretched out between past, present, and future.

All of this leads to novel reformulations of a concept of community that are bound up with a person’s own inner sense of temporality. The existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, etches these lines thought within the contours of his own thinking as follows: “Time separates me from myself, from what I have been, from what I wish to be, from what I wish to do, from things, and from others.” The human subject is found in time as are all social relations. Time serves to constitute the most fundamental aspect of these communal bonds. Within society, time may even define the parameters of community.

Thus, moving ahead with these assumptions, we can approach a subtlety of the Hebrew language and extract further insight into the Jewish conception of community. One discovers that a fascinating conceptual relationship is drawn in the Talmud when the rabbis designated the term for community as tzibur. Taken as a kind of substitution for the term used in the written Torah—kehilah (assembly)—tzibur stems from the word tzever which in its original Torah context meant “a pile”.

Following its plain meaning, tzever/tzibur is used to denote the assemblage of diverse items, an assortment of things thrown together and amassed. Later, when this term is extended to apply to people instead of just objects, one senses that the original meaning provides a commentary on the rabbinical concept of community with all its seemingly random social complexity.

Of the many statements in rabbinical literature regarding the unusual qualities of the word tzibur, one of the most interesting comes from the 17th-century kabbalist, Nathan Nata Shapiro from Krakow. In his famous work the Megaleh Amukot on the Torah, he suggests that the letters of the word tzibur (צבור) be viewed as an acronym.

The letters of the word are (צ) tzadi, (ב) bet, and (ר) resh which refer to three distinct classes of people within the community: tzadi refers to tzadikim (the righteous), the bet to beinonim (the intermediate or average) and the resh which stands for the resha’im (the negative elements—literally the transgressors and lawless). The resh is connected to the bet and tzadi by the letter (ו) vav, as we will see. The manifold meaning of the vav is exposed by various interpretations of its grammatical function. Most often referred to as the vav hahibur, the vav that “connects” and whose literal meaning is “and”, becomes further highlighted due to the fact that the name of this letter vav means a “hook.” Moreover, commentators have pointed out that also its form resembles a hook.

Thus, the seemingly trivial inclusion of this extra letter adds more than its normal assistance in the vocalization of the word. It has philosophic content. In this depiction of a community, the community is not complete without the inclusion of all three of its strata. Despite the natural tendency to exclude the resha’im (the socially degenerate or lawless) from the equation—to only want to associate a community with its positive or neutral members—this kabbalistic model extends communal identity, and therefore responsibility (one would hope), to include the negative elements as well.

Moreover, these elements, far from being fixed as negative, maintain the “grammatical” function of not only connectivity but also carry the redemptive and transformative character alluded to in the other dominant grammatical function of the letter vav: the vav hahipuk. Here, the placement of this letter in front of a verb transforms its tense from the past to future (or from future to past). It binds past and future and demonstrates an underlying interrelationship between them.

The idea of the letter vav linking the past to the present and future—given the social status maintained in each of these temporal zones—would seem to indicate that time does not work in only one direction—thereby negating the arrow of time that characterizes the flow of time. In Hebraic thought, the concept of repentance, teshuvah, which is better translated as “return,” refers to the temporal shift, to turning back time, to repairing of the past and then going back to the future.

The function of ‘temporal return’ is not the eternal return of Nietzsche (where the same thing happens over and over again) but rather the refusal to ever meet with finality. The past is neither sealed nor frozen, but living as one within the dialectical tension that allows it to grow and develop from the perspective of the present and future to which it must always attach itself.

Often rabbinical and scriptural assertions appear in pairs where the same general message is formulated both in a positive and negative form. One example of this phenomenon, appearing in the teachings of the Sages (Talmud Bavli: Berachot 30a), commands a person “to always join oneself to the community” while the parallel statement (Ethics of the Fathers 2:4) enjoins a person “to not separate oneself from the community.”

These statements thereby reflect the proper consciousness of the temporal community. The obligation to avoid creating a social schism, wherein I stand apart from another, would seem to proceed, at least at first glance, from the notion of a common denominator—meaning that if a certain individual does not display the requisite qualities that certify membership—the properties of sameness and identity that lead to identification—then that person is excluded. Here the terms are reversed somewhat and a person, due to his or her own sense of individuality and non-conformity, or perhaps due to his or her alienation and disenchantment with the community, may feel inclined to sever ties. Nonetheless, the Talmud insists that this is prohibited. Moreover, far from sufficing with the negative injunction, a person is instructed to actively attach oneself to the community—to meditate and reflect upon the factors that engender its constitution.

Given that in this analysis, the complementary part of the community must out of necessity be comprised of radically diverse individuals—as if the difference from one community to another was not profound enough. Here the more radical and irreducible distance is encountered within one’s own immediate sphere—a recognition that the interval between myself and my immediate neighbor, the person in physical proximity to me, may be registered as infinitely greater than the person who remains anonymous in a far-off distant land. Consequently, the rabbinical tradition insists that community is founded upon the unbreakable unity of those with nothing in common.

Up next: Part 2 of The Temporal Community

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