Compassion in Judaism
Rabbi Shai Held–theologian, scholar, and educator - passionately argues that compassion and empathy are essential to fully living the Jewish faith, even when being compassionate is challenging and scary.
Rabbi Held is is a rosh yeshiva (Rabbinic dean) and Chair in Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar. He holds a Ph.D. in religion from Harvard University and is considered among the most influential rabbis in America. In 2011, he was awarded the Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education. David Ellenson, then-president of Hebrew Union College, wrote in a letter of support that “Rabbi Held could easily have a career as a professor at Harvard or Yale, but has chosen instead to live his life ‘in the trenches,’ helping a generation of Jews take hold of their birthright and find ways to make Judaism meaningful, compelling, and sustaining in the twenty-first century.”
Compassion
By Jay Litvin (from Chabad.org)
Pity, sympathy, empathy, compassion. Each is received at various times by one in distress. They are the responses engendered by our misfortunes from those we encounter. And each feels different when received. Each has a different effect on those who are suffering in the midst of psychic or physical crisis.
Of the four, compassion has a unique quality, a quality so different from the rest that it connotes a certain spiritual as well as emotional characteristic. Perhaps for this reason it is often cited in spiritual/religious texts as a virtue to be sought and developed.