(50)“…acquire for yourself a friend”
17. As we have discussed with relation to attaining of God’s loftiness, when society does not consider God as it should, it weakens the individual and prevents him from attaining of God’s loftiness. This also applies to one’s rabbi whom society does not value properly. It prevents the student from properly grasping his rabbi’s loftiness. This is why the sages have said, “Assume for yourself a master, acquire for yourself a friend,” meaning that man can form a new social circle for himself to help him realize his rabbi’s loftiness through the love of colleagues who think highly of his rabbi. Influenced by his colleagues’ talk of the rabbi’s high level, each one experiences the feeling of his high level, and giving to the rabbi turns into receiving and into fuel, to the degree that will bring him to also engage in the Torah and the commandments for their own sake. Hence, they spoke of the forty-eight virtues that the Torah is acquired with: serving the sages and companionship with one’s contemporaries; since besides serving one’s rabbi he must also be careful about his friends, that is, he needs the influence his friends exert over him to attain his rabbi’s high level because attaining loftiness is completely dependent on his environment; a single person can never accomplish it, as explained.

(51) Attaining loftiness is achieved under two conditions. The first is to always listen to and fully accept others’ values. The second condition is that the number of people will be large, as said, “In the multitude of people is the king’s glory.”

(52) To accept the first condition, every student much feel himself to be the least of all his companions. Then can he accept the perception of loftiness from them all as a greater cannot receive from one lesser than he, or even be influenced by his words. It is only the lesser that is moved by the appreciation of the greater one. According to the second condition, every student must consider the virtue of any companion highly and hold him dear as if he were the greater person in the generation. Then society will influence him as if it were sufficiently large because structural majority is more important than a numerical majority (v. Mishna, Ohalot 2:1).