Jews are like the limbs of a single body.
We might think of it as an organic entity, which is more than a collection of its parts.
We would not consider 600 chairs as an organic entity, but the 613 limbs of the body and the 613 mitzvot are.
Such an organism must fulfill three conditions.
First, the combination of parts is not arbitrary.
They cannot be increased or reduced at random.
Second, the parts relate to each other and to the total being.
And third, the function of each part serves the whole body.
Each part of Israel is meaningful and vital to every other part.
One part can never dissociate itself from another-from its needs, sufferings, and illnesses-just as the head cannot say, "What happensto the finger is none of my concern."
This perspective leads to a love of Israel that is not necessarily emotional but essentially one of caring.
No Jew can divorce himself from another, because he knows that someone else's problem is essentially his own.
If one were to feel detached from one of his limbs or a part of his personality, he would be considered severely ill, suffering from schizophrenia or something worse.
Yet a lack of identification with the Jewish people is no less significant.
The entirety of Israel is not a haphazard collection of points but one complete structure, a combination of elements that takes shape and, if incomplete, grows deformed.
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From Understanding the Tanya, Chapter 32, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz