A Meal, a Song, and the Work of Becoming Friends

We often think of community as something that happens around a common idea: we study together, attend the same lessons, share the same goals. But a real community is built through something much more basic - and much more challenging than all the typical things.

We have to learn how to be together.

That is why we are now beginning our Thursday gatherings with something very simple: a shared meal.

Not another evening of intensive study. Not another lecture. A table filled with good food, music, conversation, and the opportunity to look at the people around us not simply as fellow students, but as friends.

The Kabbalists understood that this is not a side activity. It is the work itself.

Rabash wrote that when it comes to the love of friends, we help one another by learning to see the good in each other. He writes, “love covers all transgressions.”

That is a powerful idea because it does not mean that we suddenly stop seeing differences between us. We are still different people, with different personalities, opinions, habits and egos. The work is to build something above those differences.

Our Rav, Michael Laitman, has described the principle very simply: “Love towards one another, unconditional love of the world is the general inclusive force.”

But love is not something we can simply decide to feel. We develop it through practice. We create situations where we have the opportunity to listen, appreciate, encourage, give something to another person and make room for someone else's experience.

That is what Thursday is about.

Everyone will bring a short excerpt from the writings of the Kabbalists that personally touches them. But instead of analyzing it intellectually, we will share why we chose it. What does it awaken in me? What do I want my friends to receive from it?

Then we will break into small groups and ask a very simple question: What is one small thing you have received from the friends here that you would like to take with you into the coming week?

The question may sound simple, but it points to something profound. We are training ourselves to notice what we receive from one another - and then to think about what we can give back.

This is how a group becomes more than a collection of individuals.

The Zohar says, “How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” Rav explains that the friends may initially seem very different - even opposed to one another - but through their effort to connect, they can return to brotherly love.

And that is the real purpose of these evenings.

To create more and more moments where we experience that connection is possible.

A meal. A personal story. A passage that moved someone. A conversation in a small group. A song that everyone knows. A new friend sitting beside you.

None of these things seems particularly dramatic on its own. But together, they create the fabric of a community.

And then we sing.

Because sometimes there are things we cannot say to one another in conversation. We can only feel them together.

This Thursday, we will sit around one table, open our hearts a little, and practice the most important work we have: becoming friends.

As Rabash taught, the friends are not simply people who happen to study together. They are the people who help one another move toward the goal.

That is the community we want to build.