Our sages say (Pirkei Avot 4:10): Be humble in spirit before all people. This is seemingly difficult to understand: one can accept feeling humbled before someone superior, but to feel humbled "before all people"?

The explanation is that the entire Jewish people are a unity, like the human body. Each member of the body is part of a whole, of the entity of the body. Just as each part of the body needs the others for its own wholeness, each Jew needs the rest of the Jewish people to achieve their own wholeness.

It is true that the body has a head and a foot, and apparently the head is superior to the foot. However, the foot also has virtues that the head lacks, such as walking and supporting the head. In other words, each part has virtues and defects, and only through the integration of the virtues of each member is a body formed.

The same is true of the Jewish people. Each individual has their virtues and flaws, and it is only through the unity of all that each person achieves wholeness.

And that is the explanation of the teaching of our sages regarding the attitude towards all people: one must consider that everyone has virtues that one does not have, that is the path to unity between people.

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