We have clarified the hashkafa needed for the members of the Great Battalion.

Hashem created us humans to uplift the rest of Creation in His service as part of the tzava Hashem, Hashem’s “battalion.” Just like everything in the world takes in order to give, we, too, are meant to do the same — of our own free will, as opposed to being forced by Hashem’s decree. As Jews, we are meant to serve as an elite group within Hashem’s army, modeling for the rest of humanity what a God-centered life can look like, on the individual, familial, communal and global level. Our guide as to what those values are and how we are meant to actualize them is the Torah and the system of mitzvos and Halacha. By leaning in to our God-given interests and abilities and finding ways to cultivate them, while concurrently exploring the Torah’s perspective on the relevant questions of value and perspective, we can identify the areas in which we are meant to have some form of impact in molding the world into the place Hashem wants us to create. Each challenge is another opportunity for a group of people to take their unique skills and bring them to bear on the issue, guided by the Torah communicating Hashem’s perspective and value system. Some people will work on smaller issues, others will tackle larger issues; the scope is less important than the mentality of everyone dedicating themselves to the benefit of the larger whole, fulfilling the mandate of “l’ovdah u’l’shomrah —to work it and guard it.”

To illustrate what this could look like in practice, we will take a number of the challenges presented at the beginning of this book. Our communities are the Edens in which we have been placed “to work and preserve;” these challenges are our responsibilities. How can we practically go about addressing them?

Bite-Size Challenges

As a fifth-grade elementary school student, one of my favorite recess games was playing “keep-away” against the eighth graders. I was quick, reasonably athletic, and (most importantly) stubborn as a mule. I loved the challenge of trying to beat the older boys. What I found, though, was that very few of my friends were interested in taking on the eighth graders with me. I was, in this case, an exception to the rule; for my friends, including the other athletic ones, as much fun as it may have been to beat the older students, the size of the challenge was too much of a deterrent. When the challenge feels insurmountable, it is very difficult to drum up the motivation to try to address it anyway. Even someone who is passionate about music will likely feel overwhelmed and turned off by the prospect of playing Beethoven on the piano after just learning scales. When something seems too difficult, way beyond one’s reach, it is easier to simply disengage rather than try and fail.

To address this, we need to break down the overwhelming challenges into bite-size pieces. Impossible challenges induce apathy; approachable problems, though, generate excitement. Consider a family that realizes they need to make an additional $25,000 a year to make ends meet. As a lump sum, that number is huge; what can they possibly do to reach that sum? But break it down:

$25,000 a year is a bit more than $2,000 a month. That already brings things into the realm of possibility — but don’t stop there!

$2,000 a month is around $500 a week,

which is $100 a day (working five days a week).

That can be reached by working an extra two to three hours at a range of thirty-five to fifty dollars an hour.

By breaking $25,000 a year into $100 a day, it went from “insurmountable” to “doable.” Those who have identified their passions, the areas they’re able to invest time and effort into, need to do the same with the challenges in their spheres, aiming to “move the needle” rather than solve the problem as a whole:

Rather than trying to solve the shidduch crisis, we have to think about making another 20 matches or streamlining one aspect of the dating process.

Rather than setting out to cut tuition bills in half, we can brainstorm ways to save families or schools $1000.

Rather than starting a new school from scratch to educate towards our values, start a once-a-week class or extracurricular for one or two grades.

Rather than cajoling an entire community to make aliyah together, support individuals and families making the move to make the process as easy and streamlined as possible.

It may be most practical to work on something with a relatively small group of people; if it proves successful, it can be spread in two ways. It can be shared with others to actualize on the on the same scale in a different population, and it can be adapted to work on a larger scale — but the first step is the proof of concept and excitement that comes from the success of the initial program. Finally, it is important to note again that while some of these challenges are based on data from surveys, others are the fruit of personal experience or anecdotal evidence from living in and working with members of our community, especially our teenagers and young adults.

Solely for the sake of illustration, I will present a number of challenges, such as the financial crisis, fuzzy ideology, outreach and the Shabbos experience, and apply this approach to address aspects of them on my Substack, tgb13.substack.com. It goes without saying that I have no expertise in any of these topics. The goal is not to definitively solve them, but to illustrate the potential viability of the battalion approach, and to stimulate others with more experience in each community to take up the cause in whatever way they feel is most productive. I will also share a few case studies about people who actually applied this model to different challenges.

Tzvi Goldstein graduated from Yeshiva University with semichah and a degree in Psychology. After making aliyah, he taught in Yeshivat Hakotel for five years and now edits sefarim for a number of publishers. He recently published a sefer with Mosaica Press called Halachic Worldviews, exploring Rav Soloveitchik’s approach to developing hashkafah from halachah, and writes at tgb613.substack.com. You can reach him at [email protected].