GEN496 Cain’s words have come to symbolize people’s willingness to accept responsibility for the welfare of the other.  The Alter of Kelm identifies this tendency in all of us and urges us to recognize that, yes, we are our brother’s keepers, and not just for our brothers’ sake.  … bearing the burden of the other is action that cultivates the soul of the doer.  The ego wants everything for me, cares only for me, and it is by learning and struggling to bear the burden of the other than one is enabled to overcome the insistent voice of the ego as the guiding source in life.  MORINIS 204-5

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN754 Consider the consequences of disorder, and you will be strengthened in choosing order in our life.  … The tower builders’ efforts to reach out to touch heaven were sinful because they transgressed the limits and constraints that are lead into the deep structure of the universe. … Since they flaunted order, their punishment was to suffer disorder, as presented by their inability to communicate with one another.  Failure to honor the need for order brings on chaos. This cautionary tale applies to our lives, too.  How much time, energy, emotion, and life is diverted into the channels that spring from disorder?  .. Without order, you are bound to be wasting something -- - whether time, resources, things themselves that get lost, relationships, and so on.  Not wasting is a Jewish ethical principle.  [Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made the link of Babel to disorder in his book To Heal a Fractured World (London and New York: Continuum, 2005) 142-43]  MORINIS 91-2

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN923 People who do acts of generous sustaining benevolence are not all the same.   The Mussar tradition points out that some people are moved to acts of chesed whenever they are confronted by someone who is in need of their help.  Others, however, don’t wait for that sort of opportunity to arrive on their doorstep, but rather search out any chance to act generously in ways that sustain others.   This is what the sages meant when they wrote that the way of those who do chesed is to run after the poor.   Shabbat 104a.   Abraham was the paragon of what it means to pursue chesed because the Torah tells us that he actually ran to do kind acts for others.  MORINIS 189

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1131 The second aspect of enthusiasm involves finding and expressing the energy needed to complete a task.  As important as it is to be quick off the mark, it is equally important to sustain energy throughout the whole enterprise. … the sages said, “A mitzvah is judged only upon its completion.”   Kiddushin 40a.  As much as we like to comfort ourselves otherwise, good intentions are not enough.   MORINIS 128

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1274 Wherever we habitually run up against difficulty and repeatedly cause suffering in our lives – to ourselves and those around us – lack of moderation is often the culprit.  Many things are healthy in moderation but potentially damaging in either excess or abstention.  Much research says that a moderate intake of alcohol can be good for your health, though we all know the sorts of diseases and problems born of alcoholism.   The same is true for dieting, which can maintain a healthy weight and can also devolve in to anorexia.   At the other end of the scale, obesity is now a major public health issue.  Self –esteem is a necessary spiritual strength, while self-debasement or arrogance veer away from the balanced middle range.  So it is with many other things we do in our lives.   Except for what is harmful in any measure, which out to be totally avoided, inmost other cases the ideal route is the middle one, neither abstaining in the absolute nor indulging to the hilt.   … The Torah role model for the middle way is Jacob, who made a vow asking [this verse]. By pointing out the seemingly obvious—that bread is to eat and clothing to wear—Jacob is telling us that the proper measure for food is enough to satiate hunger but not the level of sumptuous feasting. Similarly, we should clothe ourselves, but only in simple, functional attire.   There is no more virtue in starving our bodies (whether in fasting or in anorexia or bulimia) than there is in gorging endlessly on delicacies. Both extremes miss the mark.   Similarly, not taking care to have proper clothing is as spiritually inappropriate as is flaunting costly and fashionable garments. MORINIS 174

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1304 When Leah, wife of the patriarch Jacob, had her fourth child, she named him “Yehuda,” which means “I am grateful.”   The name Jew derives from “Yehudi,” the people of “Yehuda,” revealing that gratitude is intrinsic to being Jewish.   This idea is confirmed in the prayer book, where so many of the prayers express gratitude to God for all we have.   … In our lives, the Torah asks us to recite blessings for everything, from the most mundane activities, like eating, to the most extraordinary, like seeking a rainbow or the ocean, all of which help us focus on and appreciate that which we might otherwise take for granted. … we need to be ready to give thanks to a fellow human being, even if he or she has not done anything special for us.   Why? Because the soul-trait of gratitude holds the key to opening the heart.   It is an elevated soul-trait, and a fine orientation to the inanimate, human divine dimensions of the world. The refined soul is a grateful soul.   MORINIS 66

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1537 Compassion is a deep emotional feeling arising out of identification with the other that seeks a concrete expression.   Compassion flows between equals or from the more powerful to the less powerful, as we see in the Torah, where it never expresses human feeling for God.   It does, however, apply to a human king caring for subjects [this verse] and to God caring for humanity.   Deuteronomy 13:18 MORINIS 82

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1538 The moral precepts of Judaism demand that we be compassionate to every soul.   Singled out repeatedly as especially needing our compassion are the poor, widows, orphans, and others in need.   The Torah repeatedly hammers away at our obligation to help those who are vulnerable and needy.   The tradition is so insistent that we be living vessels of compassion that the Talmud Beitzah 32b asserts that “anyone who is not compassionate with people is certainly not a descendant of our forefather Abraham.” … Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, for example, notes the connection between the words rachamim [compassion] and rechem [womb] The Penateuch, this verse and draws the conclusion that we should have compassion in our hearts just as a mother has a loving, emotional bond to the child of her womb.  He writes: “Compassion is the feeling of empathy which the pain of one being of itself awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned are they to re-echo the note of suffering which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart.   Horeb 17:125  MORINIS 75-6

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

GEN1539 See [[DEUT647]] Deuteronomy 13:18 compassion MORINIS 82

SHOW FULL EXCERPT

EXOD37 If you become aware that blockages obstruct your heart, then one Mussar approach is to try to identify sole-traits that are the sources of the fear and clutching and to work on these specific qualities, rather than directly on [the trait of] generosity itself. Another approach applies more for people whose hearts are being enslaved to ego, where the inner voice says, how can I give when I don't even have enough for me? Here you might cultivate a sense that what you do for others is actually a great gift to yourself. No one loses. Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, the founder of the Kelm school of Mussar, wrote his book Chochmah u'Mussar [Wisdom and Mussar] just for the purpose of explaining how bearing the burden of the other is a profound spiritual practice. "We have spoken about this bearing the burden of the other many times," he writes. "This is the most inclusive of the attributes." He brings as his example the story of Moses, who began his spiritual journey toward becoming the greatest of prophets by responding to the suffering he saw around him, from which he had been insulated by living in Pharaoh's palace. "He saw their suffering," the Torah tells us, and what he felt had a formative impact on his soul.

SHOW FULL EXCERPT