5732

Greeting and Blessing: 

This is to acknowledge receipt of your latest letter, as well as the previous correspondence and enclosure. 

You write that you received in your work no response from individuals whom you had expected to be friendlier and more responsive. 

I trust you will not take my remark amiss if I remind you of the saying of the wisest of all men: "As water reflects a face, so does one heart reflect another."¹ This does not mean that the response must be immediate, but it is certain that if the approach is right and persistent, the response must come sooner or later. 

Besides, and this is an important point which surely needs no elaboration in your case: In doing the will of the Creator as expressed in the Torah, the essential consideration should not be whether the people in whose behalf one makes the effort appreciate it or not. But, since G-d is the source of all that is good and right, and He expects every one of us to do all we can in this direction, it is certain that our doing so is for the benefit of both benefactor and beneficiary, as well as of the wider world. 

Let me give a simple and well-known illustration,² cited in the books of Jewish ethics: In a case where for some reason one hand happened to hurt the other, surely the proper reaction is not retaliation against it by the hand that suffered the hurt. The thing to do is to find out how it happened and make sure that it does not happen again. The inference is obvious, for all Jews are like the parts of one body. 

I must also take a stand in regard to your choice of words, namely, "alienation," which also reflects your mood, apparently, for there really cannot be such a thing among Jews, of whom the Torah says that all Jews are united, a point which is explained at great depth in the Tanya, chapter 32, (in itself significant for Chasidim, since the number 32 is represented in Hebrew by the letters lamed-bet, spelling the word lev, “heart"). Thus, there can be no real alienation of Jews one from the other, although it is possible that the natural attachment of one Jew to another might temporarily be covered over by some 'encrustation of foreign matter,' which must sooner or later fall off - always provided that the approach is right, in keeping with the quotation above. 

In light of the above, your concluding thought, that you must have been “dreaming," is, of course quite inaccurate, for the opposite is true, inasmuch as this is the essential nature of Jews. 

Receipt is enclosed for your tzedakah, and may it stand you in good stead. 

With blessing,