The Talmudic sage Rava compressed his understanding of the human condition into four Hebrew words: o havruta o mituta – “either companionship or death.” Without the possibility of human relatedness, man is empty. Without an outside world of human beings, there can be no inside world of meaningfulness. Personality, liberty, love, responsibility – all that makes life worth living – depend upon a community in which man can locate and realize himself. But man is more than the sum total of his connections with others. There must be a self in order for there to be communication; there must be an inner existence to relate to the outer world. If man is not an island, neither is he a switchboard, a maze of wires that transmits the messages of others but has nothing of its own to say. God created man out of the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became “a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). Onkelos, the Aramaic translator of the second century C.E., renders that phrase “a speaking soul.” Speech is the vehicle of relationship. Man is a composite of both soul and speech, of self and a society to whom that self relates. Without “soul” or self, he is no more than an elaborate cybernetic mechanism, lacking content or meaning. Without “speech” or social relations, he is only a species of protoplasm, so withdrawn he might as well be dead.For man to be man he must main- tain the delicate tension between self and society, between personal priva- cy and public relationships. Mediat- ing between them is the family. Juda- ism is concerned with all three as- pects of man's existence. It addresses itself to the question of his inner psychic and spiritual life, his dignity and destiny. But its major concern is with the quality of man's relation- ships to the world around him, and these are usually developed within the family.This emphasis on family and com- munity may best be understood in terms of the way Judaism treats the very beginnings of man. The Bible …

The Talmudic sage Rava compressed his understanding of the human condition into four Hebrew words: O havruta o mituta. "Either companionship or death." Without the possibility of human relatedness, man is empty. Without an outside world of human beings, there can be no inside world of meaningfulness. Personality, liberty, love, responsibility — all that makes life worth living — depend upon a community in which man can locate and realize himself. But man is more than the sum total of his connections with others. There must be a self in order for there to be communication; there must be an inner existence to relate to the outer world. If man is not an island, neither is he a switchboard, a maze of wires that transmits the messages of others but has nothing of its own to say. God created men out of the dust of the earth and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, man became "a living soul" (Genesis 2:7). Onkelos, the Aramaic translator of the second century C.E., renders that phrase "a speaking soul." Speech is the vehicle of relationship. Man is a composite of both soul and speech, of self and a society to whom that self relates. Without '"soul" or self, he is no more than an elaborate cybernetic mechanism, lacking content or meaning. Without "speech" or social relations, he is only a species of protoplasm, so withdrawn he might as well be dead.For man to be man he must maintain the delicate tension between self and society, between personal privacy and public relationships. Mediat-ing between them is the family. Juda-ism is concerned with all three as-pects of man's existence. It addresses itself to the question of his inner psychic and spiritual life, his dignity and destiny. But its major concern is with the quality of man's relation-ships to the world around him, and these are usually developed within the family.This emphasis on family and com-munity may best be understood in terms of the way Judaism treats the very beginnings of man. The Bible offers two acc…