Every Person and Their Uniqueness Matter

  The once-in-seven-years event of Hakhel serves as a refresher of the original Siniaitic experience. Like Sinai, Hakhel fosters Jewish identity, connection to G-d, and the enhanced observance of Torah and mitzvos. Most relevantly, just like Sinai, Achdus Yisrael, Jewish unity, is the integral theme of Hakhel. Despite the comparison of Hakhel to Sinai, the display of unity was different. When the Torah tells of the Jewish People who gathered at Sinai to receive the Torah it provides the number of heads of households: Six-hundred-thousand men, without enumerating their families. Meanwhile, at Hakhel, all segments of Jewish society receive individual attention. The Torah enumerates, “Gather the nation, the men, the women, and the children, and the converts at your gates” (Devarim 31:11). This indicates that while Hakhel was an experience where the core of the Jewish soul and identity was expressed, it did not override the details. Rather than causing us to ignore our diverse strengths and capacities, Hakhel teaches us to embrace them as part of our wholesome, indivisible oneness. Absolute oneness and diverse contributions would seem contradictory, but not for Hakhel. This is a time when the boundless relationship between G-d and His people comes to the fore and even the diversity of the Jewish People expresses nothing but unity. Excerpt from Hakhel: The Inside Story Published by Sichos in English סיפור חסידי Once Upon a Chasid When the Rabbi Made a Mistake G‑d descended upon Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And G‑d called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses ascended. (Yisro19:20) If G-d descended from the supernal heights, couldn’t He come down just few thousand feet further? Why trouble a man of eighty to climb to the top of the mountain? Yet therein lies the essential nature of man’s comprehension of Torah. G-d is infinite and undefinable. Torah is His wisdom and will—by definition, ungraspable by the finite mind of man. The notion that the human intellect can relate to the divine truth, or even meet it halfway, is ludicrous. It is only because G-d gave us the Torah, only because He chose to suspend the line He drew at creation separating the finite from the infinite, that we can access His communication to man. But the Almighty desired that man’s understanding of Torah not be a gift from above, but the result of a combined effort, the issue of a union between the human mind and the mind of G-d. 

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