Individualistic Americans, including many Evangelicals, would do well to reflect on this illustration.
Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai taught: There is a story about men who were sitting on a ship, one of them lifted up a borer and began boring a hole beneath his seat. His companions said to him: ‘What are you sitting and doing?’ He replied to them: ‘What concern is it of yours, I am drilling under my seat?’ They said to him: ‘But the water will come up and flood the ship for all of us.’
~Lev. R. 4.6.[1]
[1] Quoted in Joel S. Kaminsky, Corporate Responsibility in the Hebrew Bible, ed. David J.A. Clines and Philip R. Davies, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series, vol. 196 (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Press, 1995).
