I am a teacher who believes that our best learning comes from experience. In my book “Relational Judaism,” I suggest that sharing experiences is a foundational element of building a caring, relational community. It is also one of the most important ways our character is shaped. So, during this most unusual High Holy Day period in memory, I have been reflecting upon those times when I have been an eyewitness to acts of chesed, a moment when one human being shows kindness to another. When we do something for others, we demonstrate the very essence of a relational community.
My late parents, Bernice and Alan (z”l), were my first and most important teachers of chesed. During an earlier viral pandemic that ravaged the world — polio — they befriended a young woman named Ruby. Like the current coronavirus, polio attacked Ruby’s lungs to the point where she could not breathe on her own. Long before ventilators were invented, polio patients were confined to an “iron lung,” a long cylindrical negative pressure device that forced air into the lungs. Lying on her back on what was called the “cookie sheet,” only Ruby’s head stuck out of this respirator. Remarkably, Ruby could read, write and even run a business. She became the leading seller of Avon products in Omaha, Nebraska. We visited Ruby often, bringing her favorite magazines, playing gin rummy and just schmoozing. When a portable respirator became available, my father would lift Ruby out of the iron lung into a wheelchair and take her to the movies and the theater and for long car rides. She was a lifelong friend.
One day, one of my mother’s girlfriends returned from a national Women’s League convention, where she had learned about a sisterhood chapter that helped a blind Jewish boy become bar mitzvah by transcribing the siddur into Braille. The friend asked my mom, “Do you think, Bernice, we could create a Braille group at Beth El?” To this day, I don’t know why this story captured my mother’s heart, but it did. She recruited a bunch of her girlfriends, and they commandeered a closet in the basement of the synagogue, raised the money to buy Braille typewriters and fabricating equipment, taught themselves how to transcribe both English and Hebrew, and created the first-ever Passover haggadah for the blind. The women in the Braille group became lifelong friends.
My father never finished high school. After his father went broke, my dad had to work to help bring in some money for the family. For the rest of his life, he was a voracious reader, teaching himself a vast vocabulary. When he finished a book, he never kept it. He gave it away to those he knew would be interested in the topic. These readers also became his lifelong friends.
At our Passover seder table, Mom and Dad always invited guests. Each year, they would call Offutt Air Force Base to ask if any Jewish soldiers needed an invitation to a seder. Some years, they called Boys Town — the home for at-risk juveniles located just outside the Omaha city limits — to offer Jewish kids a chance to celebrate with us. One of these boys became a lifelong friend, too.
My parents never uttered the word chesed. They didn’t sit me down to teach me how to live a life of loving kindness. They did something much, much better. They got me up off the couch and took me with them to visit Ruby, to paste the Braille pages of the Haggadah together, to share a love of reading, to welcome a stranger in need of a place at the table. In each of these experiences, I learned that the reward for this chesed was the lifelong relationships they created with all the people whose lives they touched.
May these memories of my parents continue to be a blessing and inspiration to all who are embracing a life of relational kindness.
