Me or We? The Individual vs. the Collective in Halacha & Kabbalah - By Rabbi YY Jacobson

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How to Like the People You Love: The Mistake of Rabbi Akiva’s Students For Source Sheets: http://www.theyeshiva.net/jewish/2393 Rabbi Akiva taught his students to love. But they could still not learn to respect their colleagues. Why? How does Jewish law and Jewish mysticism view the reality of the collective vs. the individual? An analysis by the Rogatchover Gaon on the view of Rabbi Akiva in various Talmudic laws reveals a pattern of thought: The collective is not only a sum of many individuals joined together; but there is a transcendent reality in which all of the individual details melt away in a single integrated oneness. There are two charged terms in the Hebrew language: Love and respect. The first comes from a sense of oneness; the latter is born from a sense of distinctiveness. Can it be that the students of Rabbi Akiva knew how to love but not how to respect? There are people you like but you don't love; there are people you love but you may not like. There are people that you love and you like, and there are people, well, that you don't love and you don't like either. You love your parents. You love your brothers. You love your sisters. But you don't necessarily like them… Sometimes you love your husband, but you have a hard time liking him. What is the difference between "liking" and "loving"? What is the difference between anti-Semites who hate Jews and Jews who dislike Jews? Why do we count both "day" and the "week" in the counting of the Omer? Why are there so many couples who “fall in love,” but after some time, they find themselves so far apart? What happened to the love? Most of us love our children. But do we respect them?