Be a BLessing

This came from an On Being Podcast "Ariel Burger - Be a Blessing""
Burger was a student of Elie Wiesel and wrote "WITNESS: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom."

Burger says about Be a Blessing
The fundamental principle, for me, at least, of all of Jewish tradition, is three words: Be a blessing. "If someone blesses you, they really see you, and they give their seeing of you to you. There's a certain sense of responsibility that comes with that. To be witnessed is a responsibility, too, as much as to bear witness. And I think about this a lot, because we're being asked to carry a lot right now. We're being asked to carry our own lives; that's heavy enough, with everything that we're all going through as individuals, our families, our communities, the world, the suffering of the world and people around the world. We're asked to carry all of that. It's hard. It's daunting."

But a blessing is something that's heavy, and at the same time, it lifts us up. It's liberating to live for something bigger than myself. It frees me of my own smallness, my self-consciousness, my anxieties. Compassion is the greatest medicine for anxiety, the greatest medicine for small-mindedness. And so there's a way that we can be a blessing to each other and bear witness to one another and tell one another stories and really get in there with one another with a lot of openness. And that will lift us up. That's what a blessing really is.

Other things Burger talked about
Truth: - Be aware of the bigger picture.
In many traditions, truth is really the search for truth. It's not primarily about facts and data. We need facts and data, and that's been an endangered species, in many ways, for a while too. But there's a certain way of opening up to a larger perspective and saying, "I need to reflect, and I need to challenge my assumptions. I need to become aware of my assumptions."
You need to allow others thinking to question your assumptions and the lens through which you are looking.
He talks about looking up at the sky to pay attention to a bigger perspective.
In certain Hasidic traditions, it is literally a practice to look at the sky every morning.

Good and Evil:
In debating with people who you think are evil, Burger asks "if you resist the idea that people are only evil, does that justify evil? "
He quotes Elie Wiesel, “The key in all of this is, never allow anyone to be humiliated in your presence. Whatever has happened in the past, we must deal with those who are here now.”
He points out however there is a line.
Wiesel would not debate Holocaust deniers, because he didn’t want to dignify that position with a debate.

You need to see the whole program to see these ideas in context.