At Avot 1:14 Hillel famously teaches
…אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי, וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי
If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? …
In the Shavuot issue of Torah-To-Go, Rabbi Avi Berman cites this teaching and comments:
“This is often read as a tension to be balanced. But perhaps …it is a statement that these two truths are not opposites, at all, but mutually dependent. If one lives for the klal in a way that is disconnected from one’s authentic self, the contribution will not endure. It will be performative, unsustainable, and ultimately untrue. And if one turns inward alone—engaged only in self-definition without outward purpose—that, too, collapses into a kind of spiritual superficiality, a life of endless self-reflection without meaning”.
To put it another way, when being for others, one should also be a little bit for oneself—and, in being for oneself, one should also be a little bit for others.
Now for the fractal bit. When being for others and also a little bit for oneself, a bit of the self that one dedicates to others should also be for oneself while a bit of what one does mainly for oneself but also a little bit for others should also be a bit for others and mainly for oneself. And so on, ever after.
In practice this is nonsense, but it works very well in theory and underlines Rabbi Berman’s point: investment in oneself and in one’s community are not mutually exclusive; they are complementary.
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