As I sit over a gemora with the new zman starting and Shavuos on the horizon, a myriad of thoughts are on my mind. But one stands above them all: Why am I doing this? When I learn this line of gemora, am I not one of the thousands learning it at the same time? Of the tens of thousands who have learned it in the past? Do I have something to offer, or am I lost, faceless among the masses like some kind of Where’s Waldo?

The question isn’t just something out of the blue. It can be traced back to words I’ve heard echo time and time again from peers and teachers, in one iteration or another. “Do you think you’ll understand the Tosafos, Reb Chaim, pasuk, any more than the thousands of great rabbis before you?”

And isn’t that a good point? What do I have to offer that they didn’t? Is it heretical to even entertain that I can do something they couldn’t? Is there a point to me?

If I’m honest, much of my younger years were spent trying to outrun this feeling—to feel like I mattered. As such, my barometer of success (and seemingly that of my friends as well) was how much of a chaburah was created each sugya and how many new questions or ideas I could come up with. And if the gemora was merely understood clearly, even with the Ketzos and the Nesivos, that just wasn’t enough. And I hate to say it, but being mechaven to a Tosafos’s kasha was worthless. In my mind, without gaining something to call my own, I had failed. A person’s worth was determined by his uniqueness.

Yet there is a famous gemora that directly contradicts this outlook. Rav Yosef says about the day the Torah was given, “אי לאו האי יומא כמה יוסף איכא בשוקא.” “If not for today, the day we were given the Torah,” says Rav Yosef, “I would not have an individual identity. I would be like (no pun intended) your average Joe.”

Now, couldn’t Rav Yosef have said the same things I have been saying? Who am I compared to Rebbi Akiva, to David Hamelech, to Moshe Rabbeinu? How did Rav Yosef see Torah as the greatest expression of individuality, and not see himself as lost and insignificant—a mere cog in an endless chain to Har Sinai?

For me, that says that the logic of my question is built on a flawed premise. Yes, in our younger years our rank—our top bachur status—was measured by what we produced. How good of a shtickel Torah we could say. Could we ask that piercing question?

But in reality, that’s not how it works at all.

The Yalkut says in Yisro that every Jew at Har Sinai said, “Hashem is talking to me.” I believe the explanation is based on the concept many meforshim explain: that at Har Sinai, all the Jews from all generations were there, and every Jew got a unique connection to the Torah—a connection and perspective that he alone has. With his unique neshama, kochos, and circumstances, he has a unique relationship to the Torah, just as we know each Yid has a unique tafkid and relationship with Hashem.

And that tells us something so powerful.

That each person’s learning is unique. Even if two people are learning the same thing—and yes, maybe even with the same translation—in this world it appears the same. But in reality, each learning is totally unique, with its own revelation of Torah. Because each person learning it has his own unique neshama, with its own connection, its own world.

So when I learn a gemora, I certainly don’t have the clarity of the gedolim of yesteryear. And yes, a thousand other people could be learning it at the same time. But none of them are me, and no one else can learn my Torah. We may be saying the exact same words, but it is worlds apart. My connection to these words is mine and mine alone.

So it’s not that surprising that Rav Yosef would look at the Torah as the pinnacle of individuality. After all, in everything else in life, even if I’m good at something, there is always someone better. But in Torah, I am unique. I am the only one who can learn this.

Perhaps that is why, leading up to Shavuos, we perform the mitzvah of sefira. Sefira is unique in that it is the only mitzvah that everyone does with the exact same action: counting. For lulav, everyone has a different one; for shofar, tefillin—each can be performed in a unique way.

Perhaps sefirah is this way because Hashem wants to teach us this lesson: that even though everyone is doing the exact same thing, Hashem wants each individual to keep it.

Because even though it appears we are doing the exact same thing, to Hashem every mitzvah is unique.

To tell us that we each do matter, and what we are doing truly makes a difference.

So as a new zman begins and Shavuos approaches, let’s reframe the question.

Not: What do I have to offer that they didn’t?

But: Can I show up as myself?

Because that’s the only thing no one else can do.

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