What’s the real purpose of a chabura—a close-knit group of friends committed to spiritual growth?

In the heartfelt and powerful final episode of the series exploring the mitzvah of Ahavat Yisrael, Rav Shlomo Katz explores how true friendship isn’t just a bonus on the path of serving Hashem—it’s the foundation. Through Torah, stories, and the lived experience of his own community, Rav Shlomo unpacks the spiritual depth of sacred friendship: not just learning with each other, but growing for each other.

This episode is a journey into:

• Why a chabura isn’t a social circle—it’s a vessel for transformation.
• The difference between friendship, love, and deveikus (soul-attachment).
• Why we must not only share our pain with a friend, but also our holiness.
• How commitment and trust build the kind of inner circle where real growth becomes possible.
• The deeper meaning behind holding someone’s hand through their struggles.

With personal stories, teachings from the Piaseczna Rebbe and Chassidic masters, and a moving dedication to a lost friend, Rav Shlomo brings us into the heart of why we need each other, not just to get through life, but to elevate it.

What gives us the right to explain someone else’s suffering? In this emotionally charged and spiritually deep shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz opens a window into one of the most subtle yet critical aspects of Ahavat Yisrael: refusing to define someone by their pain, flaws, or current state.

With teachings from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Tanya, and the Torah itself, Rav Shlomo challenges us to see others—and ourselves—as works in progress, never final products. He reminds us that true love isn't about turning a blind eye, but knowing when to gently sweep things under the table and when to courageously show up with compassion.

This episode explores:

• Why you can look inward and reflect on your own suffering, but can never justify someone else’s.
• The difference between love that heals and judgment that wounds.
• How to be the kind of person whose presence radiates nonjudgmental love.
• When (and if) giving mussar can ever truly help, and the deep introspection required before doing so.

This is a shiur about the deepest kind of empathy, the holy restraint of not speaking, and the courage to simply sit beside a fellow Jew in their pain, without trying to explain it away.

We tend to be most agitated not when someone lies about us — but when they see something true about us that we’ve tried to keep hidden.

In this deeply honest shiur, Rav Shlomo Katz brings us into the inner world of a maamar that reframes what it really means to “love your fellow as yourself.” At the core is one of the most disarming truths in Chassidus:

Just as I see my flaws — and choose not to hold them against myself — so too, I must learn to look at you.

Real Ahavat Yisrael doesn’t mean being blind to another’s faults. It means choosing not to give them emotional weight. Just as we instinctively cloak our own shortcomings in compassion, we are asked to hold that same surrounding love (ahavah makif) toward others.

In this Shiur:

- Why we tolerate our own flaws — but resent others for noticing them
- The mystical role of “surrounding love” (ahavah makif)
- How to love someone without denying their reality
- What “don’t do to your friend what is hateful to you” really means
- The radical Chassidic view of compassion as a conscious override

If we can learn to hold others with the same soft hands we use to carry our own hearts, then we begin to fulfill the mitzvah not only with intention, but with integrity.