Medium – I am firmly in the camp of not telling others what to do with their lives, so I won’t list what I think others should do. Sorry if that sounds counter to what many believe is toras moshe misinai, but it is my perspective, and I don’t see myself as someone who is perfect enough in my own observance to have the temerity to tell others how to improve theirs.
For myself, I think the most important thing I have done and can do is see the best in each individual Jew, and learn what I can from them. I have learned incredible lessons in ahavas yisroel, in tzedokoh, in veohavto loreacho komocho from totally secular Jews, from Jews who consider themselves reform and conservative. (I have learned these lessons from chareidi and MO Jews as well.)I have seen selflessness and a willingness to give 100% of her time, effort, and consciousness to the future of the Jewish people from an Ethiopian Israeli woman who considers herself secular, but nonetheless transmitted Torah values to the young people she worked with. I have worked with the most broad spectrum of people imaginable in the Jewish world. There is one mostly secular woman, in a very small town far from anywhere, with a tiny Jewish community, who decided to stay instead of retiring to live near her grandkids because she was the only one left in the town who had been taught how to perform a taharah and had been doing so for 30 years, and the older people were all that was left in the community. That is an incredible dedication to am Yisroel. I hope I can continue to do this, and to remind myself as well that I should look inwards to see the beauty that is apparent in our community as well, and not only being critical of its shortcomings, within the higher standards it sets for itself.