Share the burden, feel the pain?

In light of the current crisis facing not just Israel but world Jewry I would like to share with you a passage I recently came across in “Lightening the load” by R’ Reuven Leuchter, Mishpacha, 23 January (full text here). He writes:

The suffering around us isn’t just a cause for weeping — it’s a call for avodah. Our times demand from us the middah described in Pirkei Avos as nosei b’ol im chaveiro; literally, sharing our friend’s burden. Being nosei b’ol means seeing everything that your friend is going through, including the subtle difficulties you wouldn’t notice with a superficial glance. This is a necessary step toward helping your friend or providing emotional support, but it’s also significant in itself. Even when we can’t help, we must not remain indifferent to our fellow Jew’s plight. If we can’t alleviate our friend’s difficulty, the least we can do is acknowledge it.

To work on being nosei b’ol, we have to dispel a common misunderstanding. Being nosei b’ol doesn’t mean feeling other people’s pain. If we understand the severity of their hardship, we will inevitably be emotionally affected. But if we try to approach the plight of our fellow with our heart alone, we risk getting sucked into the quicksand of despair. Becoming too emotionally involved actually prevents us from helping others, because when someone is sinking in quicksand, only someone standing on firm ground can help him.

The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him. To take a moment to step into his shoes and just think about his world, without searching for solutions. What is it like to live in his situation, day in and day out? How does it impact him physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially? We’re often blind to the difficulties our friend experiences because we don’t think about his life. Even caring comrades can be oblivious to the most painful aspects of their friend’s situation, simply because they never thought it through.

To be nosei be’ol im chaveiro, literally pulling the yoke with one’s fellow humans and sharing their burden, is one of the 48 qualities associated with acquiring Torah skills and living in accordance with its precepts (see Avot 6:6). You don’t have to judge another person before you share their load. Indeed, Avot 2:5 suggests that, since we never stand in another person’s shoes, as it were, we should not even try to do so. You do have to think about others—not just in the abstract or when reminded, but in way that the result of your thoughts may be helpful to them. Yes, it is a tall order, but when our brethren are so greatly in need of help we should at least make the effort, even if this means overcoming the myriad distractions that come between us and our thoughts for others.

R' Leuchter writes: “The beginning of being nosei b’ol is not to feel for the other person, but to think about him”. It’s easy to extrapolate from this a message that we should not feel for others, but that’s not what he is saying. Of course we should have feelings; we wouldn’t be human if we were devoid of them. But an increased awareness of other people’s predicaments is only the beginning. If we don’t think meaningfully about their plight, what value are our feelings—to ourselves and to others?

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