POWER OF COMMUNITYWe live in a global society - when crisis strikes, it's our responsibility together to find solutions. There's power when we join together as a community to help!
1. Hillel said, "Do not separate yourself from the community." Pirke Avot 2:5 2. And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? Pirke Avot 1:14 3. Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, I am Adonai. Leviticus 19:16 4. How do we know that if a person sees another person drowning, mauled by beasts, or attacked by robbers, s/he is bound to save him? From the verse, "You shall not stand by the blood of your neighbor!" Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 73b 5. Separate reeds are weak and easily broken. But bound together, they are strong and hard to tear apart. Tanhuma Nitzavim 6. Observe the waters: When they flow together, they seep along stones, trees, earth and many other things. But if the waters are divided into many streams, the earth swallows them and they disappear. So shall you also be if you allow yourself to be divided. Apocrypha 7. If the community is in trouble, a person must not say, "I will go home, and eat and drink, and all will be well with me…" But rather, a person must share in the concerns of the community, for so we find that Moses, our teacher, shared in the distress of the community… Those who share in the community's troubles are worthy to see its consolation. Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 11a 8. Woe to the person who says, "Peace be upon my soul!" and does not join the community in its hour of trouble. Shevet Musar 9. When can someone truly be called a 'mighty person?' When there's an individual who is about to fall into a pit, and that someone seizes the individual's hand so that s/he does not fall in. Or when that someone sees another fallen into a pit and lifts the other out of it. Midrash Psalms 52:6 |
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Jewish Education Center of Cleveland
http://www.jecc.org
Jewish Education Center of Cleveland
http://www.jecc.org