Examine the mitzvah of Ahavat Yisrael
In his book “The Everyday Torah,” Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson reminds us, “Rabbi Yitzhak Elhanan points out that what makes a Torah scroll ritually temimah (perfect) is that it isn’t missing a single letter. If the scroll omits even one Hebrew letter it is pasul ( ritually unfit). So too if a single Jew is excluded from the community, then the entire community is, as it were, pasul.”
We sometimes treat fellow Jews badly and then write them off. We sometimes demonize them in print or in public because we disagree with them on an issue or don’t like their politics or personality, without realizing that we are hurting the entire Jewish community. In the month of Elul let us hope to examine the mitzvah of Ahavat Yisrael (love of all Jews) as seriously as we take other mandates of Jewish values and Torah tradition.
Steve Israelite
Lee’s Summit, Missouri