An Open Heart

An Open Heart: The Mystic Path of Loving People

by Yitzhak Buxbaum

Jewish Spirit Publishing Co., Brooklyn, New York    © 1997    96 pp.

In this little jewel of a book Buxbaum describes practices, and illuminates with stories of famous rabbis, the Jewish path of love and compassion.  To give but one example, Rabbi Simha Zissel Ziv taught:  “…even doing good to others as a mitzvah [good deed, commandment] is not the highest motive.  One should not do acts of goodness and compassion from calculated motives of doing a mitzvah, but from a natural affection that is accompanied by generosity and joy. . . . The Torah tells us to seek the other person’s good and to love him, not because it is a mitzvah, which would not be real love… but to love him as you love yourself.  No one loves himself because ‘one should love people because God created them,’ but naturally, without calculations.”  Buxbaum’s book is accessible and filled with practical suggestions which a seeker of any faith could use to enrich their path.

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