Love of the Stranger

I recently saw a video of Reb Shlomo Carlebach teaching and singing. Someone asked him about his way of walking the streets. He would open his heart to strangers he would bump into in the street, all the time. Shlomo said that in the Zohar it is taught that we come beck and reincarnate in this world three or four times, in order to fix our souls. (In case of emergency five times.) When we come be we meet again the same people in order to rectify that which we missed last time. Therefore, said Shlomo, I never want to miss any opportunity to meet somebody new.
People think that you need an excuse to approach a stranger, like, “I think I recognize you from some place.” Or, “You look exactly like my sister’s friend.” You can be totally straight. You can simply say, “Hello, who are you?”
Incidentally, after Shlomo was niftar the homeless people in Manhattan arranged a memorial gathering for him. Fifteen hundred people attended.