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The Maggid of Mezrich asks a question fundamental to Chassidic doctrine. A man can compel himself to perform a physical act. Thus, he can force his hand to give charity even though his heart is not in it. He may compel his mind to study or to meditate even though he may have no real desire to do so, and he does it only because he considers it the proper or necessary thing to do. But how can one force himself to love, or to fear, or to refrain from hatred on command? If one feels love within his heart, then he has that feeling, but if he does not, what good could a commandment do?
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A famous Talmudic story relates how a prospective convert to Judaism asked the Sage Hillel to teach him the entire Torah while standing on one foot.
Hillel answered that one must fulfill the commandment of "Ahavat Yisrael", love of one’s fellow Jew, and that the rest of the Torah is commentary. (He followed with the less-known conclusion, "Go learn!")
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The emotion of love has been the subject of poets and romantics for centuries. We need not enter into any analysis of that topic, but, as it relates to loving a fellow Jew, some kind of specific definition is obviously necessary.
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Most of the Jewish people are so scattered and removed from each other that they hardly ever find a common language, or even any language that makes sense to them as Jews. This is what is called assimilation, which is basically the loss of their common heritage. We therefore have to try to reach some deeper levels of the soul, many of them bordering on the unconscious, to help us get back to talking together, to having some kind of a common language.
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One of the ultimate goals of man is the imitation of G-d. We do this in every good act, paralleling G-d’s own creation of good. The most direct way that we can do this, however, is in our actions toward our fellow man.
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