How good and pleasant it is when brothers sit together in love, kinship, peace, and companionship! If loving and lending a helping hand is such a great obligation amongst strangers, then all the more so among brothers. But how deplorable it is in the eyes of Hashem and men when there is a fight between brothers. Woe to them if they do not assist each other during hard times, or if a wealthy person does not support his poor brother with dignity. Any person whose brother is in the midst of a hardship should imagine that his father and mother are standing before him, begging that he have mercy on their offspring.
In order that there be peace between brothers, they must be accommodating, forgiving, and easygoing with each other, for these are the character traits befitting of all people, all the more so of brothers.
An important safeguard for maintaining peace among brothers is that they not live in one house, eating at one table; rather, each one should have his own place. If they are partners in a store and they see that disagreements and quarrels are emerging between them, they should quickly separate and dissolve the partnership. The same is true of anything else that is causing a dispute; they should promptly remove the cause in order to ward off sin. This, in general, is a major principle regarding the pathways of peace: chase down the controversy and uproot it right at its beginning, before it develops and spreads.
The most important aspect of love is love of the soul. How can a person bear to see the evil that will befall his brother in the World of Truth, which will also cause shame and disgrace to the soul of his father and mother. Therefore, if a person sees that his brother is going down a bad path, or that he is doing something improper, or that he is not cautious in his personal matters as he should be, then the person must have mercy on his brother’s soul and the souls of his parents. He should admonish him lovingly, using pleasant language, with grace, and with sweet and soft speech. Let him use positive words that emanate from the heart and therefore enter the heart. He should keep talking to his brother until he returns to good. A person should do whatever he can to bring the merit of Torah and good deeds to his brother and to his brother’s children. He will then receive blessing from Hashem and from his father and mother for all the good he does with his brothers and his father’s household.
