Kindness and Reality
Dear friends,
I had the privilege of sitting on a conversion Beit Din, or rabbinical court yesterday. During the ceremony I asked the young woman what she is carrying with her from her previous spiritual traditions into this stage in her life. Her answer surprised me with its simplicity. “Kindness,” she said. We Jews like to think a lot, to chew on big spiritual ideas like dogs on a bone. In our intellectual rigor, our historical anxiety, our internal searching, we often forget that the purpose of this entire operation. The spiritual idea at its heart is what the Torah calls Chesed, often translated as “lovingkindness.”
God is the ultimate carrier of this trait. On the High Holidays we recite the thirteen attributes of God, including “Rav Chesed:” Full, or lots of chesed. God oozes chesed. The Zohar depicts God dripping the milky waters of love down in streams that sustain everything. Chesed is an effortless generosity that goes beyond any conceivable reason or justification and is done simply for the sake of it.
The best example of it is the creation of the world. Maimonides builds his explanation like this:
“Loving-kindness is practiced in two ways: first, we show kindness to those who have no claim whatever upon us; secondly, we are kind to those to whom it is due, in a greater measure than is due to them.”
The second way is easier than the first. I think of parenting. Even when one of my kids is being rude, ungrateful or mean, I still (on good days) look for a way to be kind and loving. This type of above and beyond kindness is expressed by the prophet Hosea:
זִרְע֨וּ לָכֶ֤ם לִצְדָקָה֙ קִצְר֣וּ לְפִי־חֶ֔סֶד
Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love
The commentator Malbim explains: “Like how from one planted seed you will reap many sheaves.” One tiny seed of goodness doesn’t create one sheaf of reward, but many.
But it’s the first way that is the deeper form of chesed. Maimonides continues:
“In the inspired writings (the bible) the term cḥesed occurs mostly in the sense of showing kindness to those who have no claim on us whatever. For this reason, the term cḥesed is employed to express the good bestowed upon us by God.”
Does God owe us kindness? Love? Clothes? Food? Air? Well, we get them regardless. From here the path is clear for Maimonides to help us understand the very existence of the world not as a mistake, a random occurrence or an experiment, but simply as an instinctive outpouring of love:
“This whole reality - meaning the act of the creating it - is an act of God's loving-kindness. "I have said, The Universe is built up in loving-kindness (Psalms 89:3)"
Mortals like us should try and emulate God to the best of our abilities. Art comes to mind as a form of chesed not entirely dissimilar to creation. When a musician plays with total abandon of self, when an actor senses what an audience needs her to do and lets them have it, when a poet hones their words until they communicate the wordless depths of the heart, that is chesed. And every now and again we meet people who have the capacity to do for others in meaningful ways out of this same generous instinct. This is what the great Yiddish writer, Y.L Peretz expressed in his masterpiece short story If Not Higher. It’s what my neighbor, Meghan did when the reports first came out about families being separated at the border, and she flew out to the Southwest on some instinct, then shortly after created Immigrant Families Together, which continues to reunite families broken up at the southern border. It’s what we want our kids to learn when we tell them that becoming a Jewish adult includes a volunteer project to help people in need.
This type of free love, effortless giving, manifested kindness has always been the goal of any Jewish life.
This week’s parashah, Trumah, draws a clear line between this type of easy, heartful giving and the notion of community. The sacred, the social, the financial and the political come together seamlessly in an episode of human generosity without which no synagogue or Jewish place of gathering would exist today.
I hope you join me on Zoom this evening at 6:30 to witness the drawing of that line, learn about our new Chesed Committee and enjoy a She’at Chesed, an hour of grace.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha