Community, the kehillah, is for Jews a major locus of love. Jewish tradition requires a high standard of interpersonal commitment and care within local Jewish communities. Personal autonomy is valued less than communal generosity and service to others.
In their daily prayer service, Jews recite a passage from the Talmud that enumerates deeds that can never be done to excess, and whose reward is infinite: honoring parents; deeds of loving-kindness; attendance at the house of study; providing hospitality to guests; visiting the sick; attending weddings and funerals; praying; and making peace between people who are quarrelling, particularly between couples (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 127a). All of these important mitzvot (commandments) are observed in the arena of community.
God is described as showing love to individuals by doing mitzvot of community. The Talmud states, “Rabbi Simlai explained: The Torah begins with an act of loving-kindness and ends with an act of loving-kindness. It begins with loving-kindness, as it is written (Genesis 2:21) ‘And Hashem God made for Adam and his wife garments of skin, and He clothed them.’ It ends with loving-kindness, as it is written (Deuteronomy 34:6) And he [Moses] was buried in the ‘valley in the land of Moab’” (Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 14a).
In many Jewish communities, committees are organized to visit, pray for, and cheer people who are ill (bikkur holim); to host visitors (hachnasat orchim); to care for the bodies of the dead (hevra kadisha); and other such mitzvot, which build and sustain community. Whether such committees exist or not, it is the responsibility of every Jew to show love to others in the community through these practices.
Prayer services require a minyan, composed of a body of ten adults—Orthodox Jews count men only. The minyan is said to be a symbol of the community. When there has been a death, a minyan assembles for every prayer service at the home of the bereaved during the week of shiva, ritual mourning, which follows the funeral. This is often an intimate and moving symbol of communal love for those who mourn.
A highly elaborated body of laws and traditions supports interpersonal relationships in the context of community. Some of these laws include stringent rules of speech that forbid gossip, shaming or withholding information to prevent harm, requiring and regulating counsel and rebuke for community members who stray from ethical and religious norms, periods of heightened self-examination and rectification of damaged relationships, and requirements to offer charity and hospitality and otherwise sustain community members in need.
Jewish law calls for particular care for those in one’s community who are poor, weak, or without family. One is supposed to meet the needs of vulnerable members of the community in a way that builds their self-esteem and their capacity to care for themselves—for ex ample by offering no-interest loans or business partnerships.
These laws apply to all members of one’s local Jewish community. There is a long tradition of social obligation to Jews in other places, particularly to those Jews who are oppressed or impoverished, and specifically to the Jewish community in the land of Israel.
Debates exist in the Jewish tradition about the extent to which these laws of community extend to non-Jews. Prior to the modern era there was little opportunity in most places for Jews to be in community with their non-Jewish neighbors. Today many Jews live in mixed communities and see themselves as part of their national and world community as well as the Jewish community. Many Jews derive their vision of social obligation from these communal values.
