Posted to Op-Ed on July 19 2010

Love Your Fellow Crown Heightser As Yourself!


In response to the recent op-eds on CrownHeights.info, a resident emailed us a letter addressed to the whole community. She reminds everyone, as Lubavitchers we must love every Jew, whether we understand or agree with them.

Dear Friends,

This is a response to some recent op-ed pieces dealing with issues in the Crown Heights community. There are many intelligent and talented people who can address those issues, I will not attempt to do so here. But it is important to remember what the Lubavitch attitude is when it comes to solving problems.

The position and opinion of our Rebbe is clear. We have an obligation to love every Jew. Every single one. Although he's far from me, across the widest sea. In the Rebbe's first sicha to us he connected ahavas yisroel with ahavas Hashem. “If someone loves Hashem” he said, “but does not have ahavas yisroel, it is a siman that he does not truly love Hashem”. In the last sicha that we merited to hear (l'eis atoh) he spoke about it as well. I think it's safe to say he spoke about it thousands of times.

I don't recall ever hearing an “exception” to this policy. Nowhere in Likutei Sichos, to my knowledge, is there a footnote that 'qualifies' this mitzvah - that makes it contingent on one's being from a non-frum background or behaving in a certain way.

If we call ourselves Lubavitchers one thing must be clear. Every Jew is welcome, every Jew is loved. Not because they are perfect but because they are our brothers and sisters. We can disagree, we can and should seek to influence Jews who are distant from Torah, but always b'darkei noam ubidarkei shalom. And never can it come at the expense of the love and affection we must feel for them.

To be sure there are those who disagree with this approach. They hold that sometimes it is necessary to intimidate, to harass, to alienate - in order to preserve the ways of the Torah. But upon looking into the sichos and igros kodesh one hears a resounding 'lo zu darkeinu!'

It is not an easy task. The yetzer hara sure doesn't like it, and he puts up a heck of a fight. He garbs himself in a cloak of kedushah and tells us that it is our duty to preserve chassidishe standards even if its not 'bidarkei noam ubidarkei shalom'. But that is an oxymoron. Chassidishkeit means living bidarkei hachassidus. We know what Chassidus tells us about how to relate to other Jews. Anything that opposes that is atzas hayetzer.

Of course everyone reading this has heard it many times. But it needs to be repeated. Especially when people say that the Rebbe's approach is 'inapplicable' when it comes to unzere. (I don't think the author of that statement meant it literally - still, not everyone grasps the subtleties of an article that repeatedly calls for harassment and alienation).

The Rebbe knew quite well who he was speaking to.

We can try to inspire each other, to influence each other to become better Jews, that is a wonderful thing. But we must do it as friends, as brothers.

Some might say this is naive. But its not. It is the truth. And it is a truth so powerful that the yetzer hara will do everything in his power to 'cool it off'. We have been through machlokes before and have suffered so much as a community. There are signs that the trend is changing. Recently there's been much talk of achdus. The prospects for healing rifts in our community seem brighter than they did a year ago. So the yezter hara had to think of something new to chas v'shalom divide us. Let's not let that happen.