Martin Buber wrote in The Way of Man “To begin with oneself, but not to end with oneself; To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself. To comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself (Martin Buber 1878-1965)

His near contemporary Achad Ha’Am wrote “Judaism did not turn heavenward and create in heaven an eternal habitation of souls. It found ‘eternal life’ on earth, by strengthening the social feeling in the individual by making them regard themselves not as isolated beings with an existence bounded by birth and death, but as part of a larger whole. As a limb of the social body…I live for the sake of the member. I die to make room for new individuals who will mould the community afresh and not allow it to stagnate and remain forever in one position. When the individual thus values the community as their own life, and strives after its happiness as though it here their individual wellbeing, they find satisfaction and no longer feel so keenly the bitterness of their individual existence, because they see the end for which they live and suffer.” (Achad Ha’Am aka Asher Hirsch Ginsberg 1856-1927)

Both speak the same truth – we are intimately connected with others, we cannot become so focussed on our own needs or desires that we ever forget that our lives are one thread in a continually weaving fabric, that we need other people and other people need us – we cannot hide in an ascetic practise and leave the human world behind, for we are a fundamental and necessary part of that human world.

In the words of Buber, Judaism does not make personal salvation our highest aim but “Judaism regards each [person’s] soul as a serving member of God’s creation, which, by the work of human beings is to become the Kingdom of God; …True, each [soul] is to know itself, purify itself, perfect itself, but not for its own sake – neither for the sake of its temporal happiness nor for that of its eternal bliss, but for the sake of the work which it is destined to perform upon the world” (p37 The Way of Man)