Rabbi Berland's Prayer for Loving One's Fellow Jew (Ahavas Yisrael)

From Tefilah L’Ani: Leket Tefilos u’Vakashos

Prayer for Loving One’s Fellow Jew (Ahavas Yisrael)

Compassionate and Gracious Father, Who desires love between brothers, love between people, let me merit to love and camaraderie, peace and friendship with a complete heart and a willing soul.  Purify our hearts from any hint of jealousy or hatred.  Purify our blood from any blemish of wickedness or cruelty.  Purify us of any selfish interest and arouse our hearts with Your love, and that our hearts should be empty inside of us and free to love Your creatures, Your beloved, the work of Your hands, to the point that we shall be ready at every moment to sacrifice our souls, each person for his fellow. Please, Compassionate Father, Who has mercy on the destitute and poor of knowledge, “Who dwells with the despondent and lowly of spirit” (based on Yeshaya 57:15), send us a Tzadik like Hillel, who will teach us to search for the good points in every single Jew.  Forgive us our Father for our distance from the love of Israel and from the illumination of this love which the great sages of Israel instilled in us, like Hillel, who held that one needs to always be adding more, to teach that one needs to add and draw close at every moment a new soul to its Father in Heaven. Please, forgive us for blemishing the love of Israel, and let us merit to raise above the blemish of constricted consciousness of dispute and gratuitous hatred, which because of them we don’t know how to encompass the Twelve Tribes in one another, to turn them into one aspect, “Like one man with one heart,” as Moshe Rabbeinu merited to in his bringing the nation to “Israel camped there opposite the mountain” (Shemos 19:2), and to draw to them Torah from amidst the fire, in thunder and lightning, in the aspect of “all the people saw the voices” (ibid 20:15), so that they saw what is [normally] heard. Let us merit to the aspect of David’s harp, through which he drew down the five books of Tehilim, opposite the five books of the Torah, and through it he merited to reveal and gather all the good points in every single Jew and to draw through them the building of the Holy Temple. Please, let us merit to be encompassed in the level of Tzadikim who gather every good point in every Jew and – through this gathering and collecting – erect the Tabernacle and the Holy Temple.  Please, let us merit to be encompassed in the true Tzadik from whom no gloom or darkness in the world can conceal the good point in every single Jew in every single generation, [and] through this [good point] he draws in every single generation the light of the Holy Temple anew, with superior rank and superior strength, multiplying it by multitudes upon multitudes upon thousands of times from year to year. Our Father, Compassionate Father, please nullify from us the leaven and chametz of the inclination of a wicked person’s heart which remain within us from our youth, as the Baal Shem Tov said: “Chametz shall not appear to you, and leaven shall not appear to you in all your border” (Ibid. 13:7) – that you shouldn’t have, G-d forbid, any thought of defect about any Jew in the world.  Please Compassionate and Gracious G-d, let us merit to love every person with heart and soul, and let us merit to see only the virtue of our friends and not their lacks, and nullify from us the accusation of “a scattered and dispersed people,” and let us merit to the aspect of “Israel camped there opposite the mountain” – as one man with one heart, [and] each person will find favor in the eyes of his fellow and be gracious to him.  If we merit to this, we can hear from anew the Ten Commandments, because the more we love each other, the more we merit to see the light in the Torah, to receive it anew and to hear all Ten Commandment as from the mouth of the Almighty. You might also like this: https://ravberland.com/rabbi-berlands-prayer-to-love-ones-friends/