예레미야애가 3:28의 Chasidut

It cannot be more strongly emphasized that the main point of the chevraya is not the chevraya itself, but the member, friend, man, Avreich, and Bachur who enters into the avodah of the chevraya. When the Gemara tells us to form groups for the study of Torah, because the Torah is only acquired through association with others, it is not trying to tell us that the group and not the individual is the primary focus, and that if a person cannot study together with others then he should not study alone, God forbid. After all, the Mishna²³⁶Avos, Chapter 3 Mishna 2 tells us that even if a man studies Torah alone God rewards him, as it is written, “He sits alone in silence, because God has placed it upon him.”²³⁷Eicha, 3:28 If our discussion in these pages have emphasized the group, it is only in response to a grave threat. The Jewish people are compared to a house whose every corner is burning in flames, with our enemies attacking us and embittering our lives from without and our own coldness to the Torah and the avodah threatening us from within. This danger could bring about our physical and spiritual destruction, God forbid. We already said at the beginning of A Student’s Obligation that the only thing that can save Israel from assimilation and the desolation caused by such an ice-age of avodah is when the child, young man, and Avreich serves God and learns Torah with the fire of Chassidus, and feels the delights it brings from the Garden of Eden. And just as one man’s lonely pail of water cannot put out a raging fire, but only when water is brought from all directions – one with his pails, this one with his barrels, and this one with his bottles - so too, it is not enough for Chassidus alone, even though it is the crucial and sure-fire medicine, cannot save Israel from destruction even if it is ingested into our bodies and souls according to the methods and practices that we have presented. Like those other pails of water, we also need the chevraya. But the chevraya is not the vital ingredient. If we use all of these means together, then maybe God will help and save our bodies and souls from pending destruction.