Finding Your Unique Role in Chesed

I have written numerous times about the Mishnah’s metaphor for the judgment of Rosh Hashanah: We each pass before HaKadosh Baruch Hu kivnei maron. My great teacher, Rav Moshe Shapira ztz”l, always emphasized the solitude in which that confrontation takes place, which is the common element of all three explanations given by the Gemara for kivnei maron. The questions addressed to us — Who are you? What is your unique mission? How are you performing that mission? — can only be answered with respect to ourselves. All comparisons to others are completely irrelevant, as they have a completely different mission.

Every time I wrote such a column, I would receive an angry response from a friend of mine, a talmid chacham, accompanied by a plentiful citation of Torah sources. First, he pointed out, I wrongly implied that the forthcoming judgment is one on individuals alone and ignored that there is also a collective judgment. As the Rambam writes, just as there is a judgment on an individual according to his cheshbon of mitzvos and aveiros, so is there a cheshbon on nations according to the accumulated mitzvos and aveiros.

Second, he found my focus on the individual alone before G-d to be myopically egoistic: “my essence, my uniqueness, my individuality.” Even in the mashalim the Gemara gives of bnei maron, he noted, all include the individual passing single-file within a larger social context. The sheep being counted one-by-one are for the purpose of selecting the tenth as maaser, which in turn frees the rest of the flock. The travelers passing on a narrow mountain path, one by one, are nevertheless going to a common destination. And while every soldier in David’s army might have been counted single-file as they went out to battle, they shared a common purpose to triumph.

The point I believe Rav Shapira to have been emphasizing was the necessity for self-knowledge and self-definition in the preparation for Rosh Hashanah: We cannot define ourselves in terms of anyone else. Not only are “all comparisons invidious,” as my father a”h used to say, they are completely beside the point. Thinking about what our unique mission might be is critical, because that mission will implicate our judgment to a very large degree — i.e., whether we have done enough in the past year toward fulfillment of that mission to justify an extension of time to complete it. As we say in Mussaf of Rosh Hashanah, each person is judged according to his “maasav u’fkudosav” — his deeds and his mission.