Sublime

For Shimen, the “community” is a set of concentric circles beginning with his (dead) family, extending to Gerer Hasidim, and extending further to others committed to the Jewish way of life; the farther out the circle, the less weight it earns in Shimen’s calculus.

My views are consistent with those who hold that moral instincts in individuals are genetic adaptations sometimes detectable even in non-human primates;1 that social norms are products of interactions between cultural evolution and genetic evolution;2 that natural selection can act at the level of the group and not just at the level of the individu

through which he is best known to tradition: Moshe Rabbenu, the leader as teacher. Leadership is not a gift with which we are endowed at birth. It is something we acquire in the course of time, often after many setbacks, failures, and disappointments.

When the author of the Mishna Berura writes, as he often does, that “the common practice is such and such, but this is wrong,” Shimen’s response is to credit the author’s claim regarding the common practice and to ignore the admonition.

subcommunities that prove to be poorly adapted, usually because the barriers between them and non-halakhic cultures are too low, simply cease to exist,

In the first instance, the dispersion of Moses in every generation (itpashṭuta de-moshe be-khol dara we-dara) signifies the capability of every Jew to expand his or her consciousness (da‘at) to the point of being assimilated within the divine and to draw down the infinite light into the world.42 However, the righteous sages, the “eyes of the congre