Summary: Avital Hochstein. One of the givens of Jewish tradition is that matters of holiness require ten people, as we see in the context of the minyan of prayer. Many sources in the Rabbinic tradition of Eretz Yisrael connect the ten people needed for a minyan to the original, literal Sons of Israel, the ten of Ya’akov’s sons who went down to Egypt to get food. What does this connection tell us about the nature and danger of groups, of a minyan?
