Throughout our lives, we experience the tension between being an individual and being part of a community. How can we balance the two? How can we be sure to maintain our individual identities while also being part of a community at large? How can we make ourselves stand out in a community full of special people?
As we begin the book of Shmot (okay, I'm a little bit behind, we actually started Shmot this past shabbos), we see that the book of Shmot focuses on Bnei Yisrael as a whole, while Sefer Bereishit focused primarily on individuals' stories.
This begs the question: why does the book about community have the heading of "Shmot," which means names?
The community-oriented book is titled with exactly what it is that represents much of our identities: our names. A community must be comprised of many individuals; an individual, in order to maximize his or her potential, must be part of a community. Communities and individuals have a symbiotic relationship; they need each other to survive and to thrive.
We need an individual identity to establish our priorities and our intentions for our actions; we need a community to support and challenge us. I feel blessed to be part of the NCSY community, in which every individual is valued for who he or she is and what he or she brings to the supportive and powerfully inspiring community.
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