P. Noah: Community and Individual, Ayn Rand and RSR Hirsch

A strange confluence just hit me - epiphany like. In reading RSR Hirsch on Dor Haflagah, it struck me how community could be evil - even despite R. Hirsch's high praise for community elsewhere.

I could not make sense of the concept of when egotism is a legitimate
Expression of Moral Indignation, vs. when it is the opposite, i.e. The expression of conceit, arrogance, and unholy defiance.

Migdal Bavel is the paradigm of a peaceful co-operative community BUT one that has set itself up in defiance of the Divine. It sought to sacrifice the individual on the altar of the greater whole, foreshadowing both Fascism and Communism. And this suppression of the individual rightfully sparks the ego to rebel. Why rightfully? Because any collective without sanction of the Al-Mighty is inherently evil when it suppresses the individual!

No wonder Ayn Rand's flew from God-less Bolshevism. Her nature impelled her to rebel. And given the frightening parallels between Migdal Bavel and the Stalinistic 5-Year plans, her flight was well-justified! [Whether her alternative passes muster is indeed another matter.]

And so R. Hirsch emphasizes that the praiseworthy community and culture is the one built around preserving and perpetuating Torah Tradition. He himself led a paradigmatic community in Frankfort when he broke with the local Heterodox Community there. It remains functioning today, albeit in reduced numbers, in Washington Heights. B"H it is not the sole community based upon Torah Values. Thus any community whose mission is "Hirschian"
in nature deserves the deference of the individual

OTOH, any community designed to compete against G-d deserves the uprising of the suppressed individual soul.

The gray area today dear reader, is the society that is neither culturally devoted to G-d nor out to defeat G-d leaving us a tricky conundrum.

As North America WAS, say circa WWII, there was no question of a society and culture who opposed Marxist Atheism in favour of a common non-denominational service to the Al-Mighty and compassion for mankind. This society had the common focus of G-d only in the most generic terms, eschewing the barriers between sects.

Now that Secularism is replacing this non-denominational common-denominator service to the Creator, the society is slipping off of its pedestal, teetering ever so closely to a Godless tilt, Heaven Forbid.

It remains to be seen if we can restore a society that supports a common Deity in a compassionate and mutually supportive fashion as we did 60+ years ago.

Should we tilt away too far, the individuals will rise up and break away to form tiny independent communities re-dedicated to the ideals and traditions that once made us a truly "Great Society". A new Austritt Gemeinder will have to appear to preserve a Torah life-style amid the deterioration of what was once the ideal.

Just as Avraham ho'Ivri crossed over to oppose the Dor Haflagah in his own day.

KT
RRW