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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
Welcome back. It is way number 11. And way number 11 is be dibuk chavirim, using friendship for living. Being close to someone, having a friend. What does it mean to have a good friend? And what are the most important qualities to look for when choosing a friend? Our sages teach us, buy a friend for yourself. Acquire, invest, like you do for a purchase. Invest in a good friend, in a true friend. It says, either a friend or death. Because if you don't have a friend,
you have no growth. You have no one challenging you. And if you have no growth, you have no life. One who has no friends is better off dead, the Talmud says. You know why? What does a friend do? A friend cares about you. A friend looks at what's in your best interest, and they'll alert you for pitfalls. Friends are too important to leave to chance. Choose a friend and accomplish life goals with them. Find someone who can challenge you. We said this, we all have blind spots. Your
vision is 150 degrees, right? If you look out of this area, I really don't see my hands. My peripheral vision doesn't go that far. But even, right? Even in that 150 degrees, you don't see everything. You're focusing on something. You don't see something that's out of your vision. You may be able to if you pay attention to it. That means 210 degrees around you that you don't see. Have a trusted friend who can help you out with your blind spots.
Like you're driving. When you're driving, you have blind spots. Sometimes, that's why we have mirrors. But even with a mirror, you have a blind spot. And even if you have those fancy cars that have the blind spot notification, you still have a blind spot. Your friends are there to help you with your blind spots. They're able to tell you, you may be wrong. Maybe something you don't see. There's a perspective here. And anybody who's married knows this, that that's one of the
greatest virtues of marriage is that, you know, my grandfather, we once asked him about arrogance. How do we work on the trade of arrogance? And he said, just wait till you get married. Your wife will take care of it, right? But also, that's one of the virtues and the qualities of a wife is to point out the flying spots of her husband. Bring it to the fore, bring it to his attention, so to help him deal with his flaws and his deficiencies. Without friends, you lose objectivity
because you only see your own perspective. Discuss ideas with others who can be objective. It says, the two who sit to learn Torah together, the divine presence rests among them. Why? You know, when you have two scholars learning together, and we're going to see this in the next one, way number 12, the people of Haberim, which is teach in order to learn, but also to learn from a friend, to learn with a friend. You know, if you take a knife and you try to sharpen it on its own,
it's very difficult. But you take another knife, and then what happens? You don't only sharp your knife that's in your right hand, you'll sharpen the knife that's in your left hand. They'll both get sharpened. Our sages tell us that that's a friendship. A friendship, you sharpen each other. You strengthen each other. To achieve greatness, you need others to help you get there. You need teamwork. You are affected by friends and environment. If they want wisdom,
you'll want wisdom. I have a friend of mine, he retired at a very young age, very successful in business, and retired. So I asked him, what are you going to do with your time now? He says, I don't know. You know, many of my friends are into art. I'm like, are you into art? He's like, no, but I think I'm going to go to lessons so that I can be involved in art so that I can communicate with them. It's like, you see how the environment affects you.
He really doesn't care about art that much. But now that his friends are, he is. To just, you know, fit in. Imagine if he had friends who were interested in study of Torah. The interest of Torah would hopefully grow within him. If you find yourself at a philosophical loggerhead, remember that people of goodwill who reason together will come to a common conclusion. Talk things out. You don't have to agree with everyone. At least hear other perspectives.
A friend can challenge your perspective. A primary goal in life is to correct your mistakes. We're here to fix ourselves. We're here to leave this world perfect. Our world, our self. Don't be afraid to find out if you've made a mistake. Friends sharpen each other like two metals against each other, like we just mentioned. A haver comes from the term, a haver is a friend, a haver comes from the word chibur, a connection. When two separate
concepts and ideas converge, a stronger unit becomes fashioned. You take two pieces of metal and you put them together, now you have a much stronger metal. Two friends, different abilities, they come close together, they become a much stronger unit. Differences, we all know, differences make you stronger. Find a friend who can hold you accountable. You are your environment, so find good friends. You know, the Mossad policy after the Yom Kippur War, the Yom Kippur War was a very tragic day, a very tragic war for Israel.
We lost many, many soldiers, many more than we needed to. Even one is too many. We lost many. You know why? They weren't lacking intelligence. They had the intelligence. In fact, many of the low-ranking officers in the Mossad said, there's a plan of our enemy to attack us in Yom Kippur. They're like, it's a low-ranking agent, what does he know? And they didn't take it seriously. After that incident, they had to reflect and realize that flaw. And they changed their policy
that warnings from lower informants, lower-ranking informants are just as serious as higher-ranking informants. Everyone is equal. The holier-than-thou mindset is dangerous. It's a very dangerous thing. So there's no blaming others for your influences. You are the gatekeeper of your environment. You have a bad influence, remove the bad influence. Remove yourself from that environment. You have to have positive friends. If you have positive friends, you'll become positive. So a friend is someone who we can depend on to critically love us. With friendship,
our problems are cut in half and our strength is doubled. You got to be careful about a negative person. You want to be positive? Find positive people to hang around with. You have negative people around you? Negative is different than constructive criticism. We'll talk about that when we talk about criticizing people. The prerequisite to criticizing another person is you have to love them. If you don't love them, you have no business talking to them and telling them critique.