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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 everybody. Way number 30. Way number 30 is Ahuv, which is to be loved by others. How can you be loved by others? You can love others, but how can others, how can you make it that others love you? So our sages teach us a very fundamental principle, Kemayim Paneemil Paneem. When you bestow kindness upon others, they'll bestow it in return. When you shower someone else with love, it will reflect back. The more you love others, the more others will love you. The more kind you
are with others, the more kind others will be with you. There's an amazing commandment that we have in the Torah. You should love Hashem, your God. How can there be a commandment to love? You can't, you can't command an emotion and yet we see the Torah commands us to love God. Well, if we recognize how much God does for us, if we recognize how much God gives us endlessly, selflessly, then we have no alternative but to love Hashem in return. And that's our obligation.
Go investigate, go see all the things that Hashem does for you and then you'll have no choice but to love Hashem back. The same with those around you. If we notice and we pay attention to the amazing things a mother does for their child, it's impossible for the child not to want to reciprocate that love. So the obligation in this way, way number 30, is to be loved by others. Start paying attention to what other people have done for you. Even if it's something really,
really small. We're going to talk about Hakarat Hatov, recognizing the good that you've benefited from others. But just those close to you, recognize what it is they do for you. Acknowledge it, thank them and love them for it because that love will be reciprocated. If you love others, they will love you. That is the rule. Satisfying others will give you satisfaction. If you ask a parent who has normal healthy children and a special needs child, you ask them, which one do
you love the most? There's no question that the special needs child is the one that they love more. Why? Because they give so much more to that child. The rule of love is the more you give, the more you love. The more you give, the more you love. The generation that we're in today, young guys dating, young gals dating, are facing a very big problem because they think that it's all about what I can get out of the relationship, not what I can give in the relationship. Love is
about giving. The more you give, the more you will benefit from that relationship. The more that relationship will mean something to you and hopefully it'll be reciprocated in the proper way. The best quality is to see the quality of others, see their virtues. You want to know what real love is? Real love is when you see the virtue of something, you see the goodness of something and its potential. We saw by Isaac, Isaac loved Esau. How could you love such a wicked guy?
He saw the potential. If he only used that strength, that power for good, he would have been the greatest ever. Start with your family. Learn to appreciate, love, and devote yourself to them. Everyone has good. Everyone has goodness. Search for that goodness. Even, we've discussed this in a different podcast, of how to love every Jew. How to love every Jew. Every person has something unique and special that's good, that's endearing. Look for it. Search for it. You may need to dig,
may need to dig deep. That's fine. Find it because there's something special in there. Love also brings peace and peace is very powerful. Be positive. The Torah, the Mishnah says, if people around you are pleased with you, it's a sign that the Almighty is pleased with you. If the people around you love you, then God loves you as well. God's love for a person, the way in which God regards a person is equivalent to how the people around him regard.
Loving is giving. If you learn to give selflessly, you learn to love selflessly. The idea here of this whole trait, way number 30, of Ahuv, to be loved by others, is that if we're able to open ourselves up to others, not only in a giving way, we'll be able to be loved by others as well. Learn to compliment others. You will never miss out by giving others credit and make them feel good. People feel like, oh, if I acknowledge them, then it's going to
take away from me. People are going to think that I didn't do anything. The greatest leaders know how to do all the work and give everybody else the credit. You have to know how to give others the compliment because I'll tell you an amazing thing with children. When you set the bar here, they're going to live up to it here. When you set the bar here, they'll live up to it here. The higher it is, the more they'll live up to it. The lower it is, the less they'll live up
to it. It's important for us to, even if we know, I say this all the time among my friends, we talk about parenting, never catch your children doing anything wrong. Don't catch them. We learned this from the Kohen Gadol. The Kohen Gadol had bells on the bottom of his garments. Why? So that the younger Kohenim, they would hear the Kohen come, they'd be able to immediately get into the right decorum, get into right shape. That's because there's no sense in the Kohen catching them.
Parents should never catch their kids doing things. I always knock on my children's door before I come into their room. You know what? If they have something they shouldn't have, give them a second to hide it. Let the guilt stay with them. Let them not do it because they're afraid of me. Let them still feel bad. You know what I mean? It's like, because once you catch them now, they're just going to hide it better. Now it's not about doing the right thing or the
wrong thing. It's about getting caught. If I tell my child to do a task, I don't have to double check to see whether or not they did it. I'm assuming that they did it and I'll compliment as if they did. What if they didn't do it? They're going to quickly run and do it because they don't want that compliment to be in vain. They want to live up to the standard that I
set them. My parents had a rule in our house. Our children don't lie. And my father said it all the time. My children don't lie. I trust my children 100%. You know what happened? We didn't lie because we couldn't because he said that we don't lie. So we don't lie. We can't lie. I will tell you that I remember one time lying to my father. Now thinking back, it was not a very serious
matter, but it was nonetheless, it was a straight out lie. It was a straight out lie. And I remember that it's probably 30 years since then and it still bothers me. It still bothers me because we're from that family who doesn't lie, who just don't. So when you learn to give those compliments, people will learn to live up to those compliments. Love is the greatest pleasure. To receive it, you must give it. Open your heart and let the pleasure come in. That is way number
30. Ahuv, to be loved by others.