By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel in Chula Vista, California
Every election season reminds us of the sacred, slightly stressful weight of a single vote. We line up, sticker in hand, trusting that an individual mark on a piece of paper matters. If you ever doubt whether one lone soul can pivot the course of human history, consider Abraham—a man who essentially cast a single dissenting ballot against the entire Bronze Age world and completely rewrote civilization.
To appreciate the sheer audacity of this, look at his timing. The Torah says Abraham was 75 when he received the call to pack up his life and go (Lech Lecha). At 75 modern men defend their lawn ornaments, debate the merits of orthopedic sandals, and aggressively protect the thermostat. When God told Abram to move to an undisclosed location, his peers in Haran were surely whispering, “Have you seen Abram? Seventy-five years old, no kids, packing the camels, and mumbling about being the father of nations. Someone check his hydration levels.”
Yet history is consistently blind to arithmetic. Israel has never been an empire of vast numbers; it is a story of outsized impact. Greatness isn’t a census headcount; it’s moral gravity. One man, one vision, one slightly chaotic family journey transformed humanity’s ethical landscape.
A beloved story is told about the Rebbe of Apt (the Opatów Rebbe). In his youth, he resolved with fierce idealism to change the entire world. A few decades passed, and realizing the world was notoriously uncooperative, he dialed back his ambitions to his town. That proved equally stubborn. As a seasoned patriarch, he narrowed his focus to his own household—only to find his family had their own opinions. Finally, looking into the mirror, he smiled and confessed, “I suppose I can only change myself.”
Herein lies the punchline and the profound truth: when you genuinely transform yourself, you inevitably change the world around you.
Abraham is famously identified as Avram Ha-Ivri—traditionally translated as “the Hebrew,” or literally, “the one from across the other side.” The Midrash offers a sharper interpretation: the entire world stood on one side of the river, and Abraham stood boldly on the other. He wasn’t just an immigrant; he was a conscientious objector to pagan authoritarianism. Imagine the sheer stubbornness required to look at every king, idol, and mob of your day and say, “Respectfully, you’re all wrong.”
Standing apart takes grit, because crowds are loud and conformity is safe. An old Cold War anecdote captures the sheer inertia of the crowd:
Premier Nikita Khrushchev was giving a speech before the Supreme Soviet, passionately denouncing the terror and purges of Joseph Stalin. Suddenly, an anonymous note was passed from the audience up to the podium:
“If it was so terrible, what were you doing when Stalin was committing these atrocities?”
Khrushchev’s face reddened. He banged his fist and bellowed across the hall, “Who sent this note? Stand up!”
The room fell dead silent. You could hear the dust settling on the carpets. Thirty seconds ticked by. Sixty seconds. Nobody blinked. Nobody moved a finger.
Finally, Khrushchev offered a grim smirk: “Now you know what I was doing. I was doing exactly what the author of this note is doing: absolutely nothing. Because I was terrified to be the only one standing.”
Authoritarianism and cynicism both trade in the illusion that one voice doesn’t matter. They want us to believe the tally is already fixed, the culture is already decided, and that a single dissenter is merely a rounding error. But history consistently demonstrates the opposite. The trajectory of our world doesn’t turn on uniform masses; it pivots on single individuals who refuse to stay seated.
Like Abraham, we carry that same disruptive DNA. It doesn’t require conquering kingdoms or founding empires by tomorrow morning. It starts, as the Apter Rebbe learned, right in front of the bathroom mirror. When one person decides to think differently, speak with integrity, and act with courage, the scales shift. One is never just a number—it is always the beginning of everything.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California.