Kehillah

Values

A kehillah is a community of individuals who come together for a common goal or purpose. Although a kehillah can become a chaotic mass—such as during the sin of the golden calf—when positive character traits are combined in pursuit of a goal, much good can be achieved.

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From Chaos to Community

COMMENTARY

Moses transformed the Israelites from a chaotic crowd into a cohesive community through engaging them in the practice of Shabbat and the construction of the Tabernacle. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his ethical exploration of the weekly Torah portion, delves into the role of communal tasks in rebuilding a sense of unity and group cohestion.

What Moses had to do after the Golden Calf was Vayak’hel – turn the Israelites into a kehilla, a community. He did this in the obvious sense of restoring order. When Moses came down the mountain and saw the Calf, the Torah says the people were parua, meaning “wild,” “disorderly,” “chaotic,” “unruly,” “tumultuous.” He “saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughing stock to their enemies” (Ex. 32:25). They were not a community but a crowd…

Essays in Ethics; A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, Vayak'hel; The Spirit of Community 23

The Kehillah System in Europe

HALAKHAH

The kehillah system was a structured and formalized organization that ensured adherence to religious law and communal order in Jewish communities in Europe. This 21st-century work details how Jewish communities established this system with designated roles to meet the material, spiritual, and legal needs of the community.

European communities were organized on the basis of a kehillah system. In every town, village and hamlet the Jewish community designated individuals to administer communal institutions and to provide for the spiritual as well as the temporal needs of the inhabitants. A rabbinic scholar was designated to serve as chief rabbi of the city and was usually assisted by dayyanim who served as associate judges. Their primary responsibility was to rule on matters of religious law relating both to individual observance and to the community as a whole and to sit as a court to adjudicate any…

Contemporary Halakhic Problems, Vol IV, Chapter I The Bet Din, An Institution Whose Time Has Returned 9

Community Made Articulate

COMMENTARY

Jewish liturgy encourages us to move from the individual level to the collective, transforming individual merits into a powerful, collective force. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his commentary on the priestly blessings, emphasizes how the act of praying together embodies the interconnectedness of destinies within a community.

So, he says, with prayer: If we pray by ourselves for ourselves, then we rely on our own merits, about which we can never be certain. But when we pray together with the whole community, we combine our merits with theirs. Prayer is like a protective wall, and praying together is more powerful and effective. We do not need superhuman piety – merely enlightened self-interest – to realise that our destinies are interconnected. When we are blessed, we are blessed together. Prayer is community made articulate…

Covenant and Conversation; Numbers; The Wilderness Years, Nasso, The Priestly Blessings 37

The Community and Collectivity of Jewish Faith

COMMENTARY

Jewish identity is deeply rooted in the collective experience. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explores how Jewish prayers and confessions are framed in the first-person plural, emphasizing a unified identity and a collective relationship with God.

To be a Jew is to be part of a people, sharing its joys, participating in its griefs, recalling its history, making its hopes my own. That is why our most basic prayers, even our confessions, are in the first-person plural. Our aspiration is not to become a “lonely man of faith,” but rather to be part of the community of faith. In Judaism, the fundamental encounter is not I-Thou, but rather We-Thou.

Covenant and Conversation; Leviticus; The Book of Holiness, Bechukotai, All Israel Are Responsible for One Another 12

High Tea in the Sukkah 1906, Solomon Joseph Solomon, Gift of Edward J. Sovatkin, The Jewish Museum, New York.

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