Kindness - and Seichel

In Parshat Chayei Sara we read about the search for a wife for Yitzchak. Eliezer, Avraham’s faithful servant, is tasked with finding a suitable match for the heir to Avraham’s legacy. While Avraham makes clear that he does not want a daughter-in-law from the land of Canaan, he does not specify what qualities Eliezer should look for in a potential mate, the trusted servant comes up with a test to help find the right woman. As described in Chapter 24, Eliezer asked God to send him the “right woman” ie one who offers not only him a drink but also his camels. This test seems to be looking to find a spouse that excels in the attribute of chesed, kindness and sensitivity. This makes sense, since Avraham is known for excelling in the attribute of chesed. Seen though many episodes during his life, including his hospitality and his prayers on behalf of Sedom, Avraham epitomized chesed. A spouse who possessed similar traits of loving-kindness would be a suitable mate for Yitzchak and a worthy matriarch of the Jewish People. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (great-grandfather of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik) in his commentary on Chumash Beis Halevi, suggests that there is another test hinted at by Eliezer. Once Eliezer drank from the water container, what would the woman do with the leftover water? Perhaps the person drinking was ill, in which case it would not be appropriate to bring the rest of the water back to her family. It would also be insulting to dump the water in front of the stranger on the slight chance that the water had become infected. The most appropriate way to handle the situation would be to dump the rest of the water into a trough and allow the camels to drink it. According to the Beis Halevi, this second test was to determine if the woman had seichel, in addition to being kind.

Seichel literally means “wisdom” or “understanding.” But it refers to a wisdom that sometimes entails a sixth sense. It’s a kind of intelligence that comes from taking in the big picture and then responding accordingly. What happens in the absence of this seichel? A few years ago there was a news story about a driver in Vermont who steered his car right into Lake Champlain. The driver said that he was using navigation app Waze, which apparently insisted that driving into the lake was the right way to go. “The app directed the drivers to turn onto the boat launch near the Coast Guard station,” the Burlington Free Press reports. “By the time they realized what was happening, the car had slid 100 feet onto the lake. The three people in the car managed to climb out.” In June 2017, there was a man who drove into a lake in Massachusetts and blamed his GPS. He’s joined by a woman in Ontario who similarly navigated into a pond and … blamed her GPS. Seichel is also part of what comprises Emotional Intelligence, defined as the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.

Rivkah did not only demonstrate chesed, she also demonstrated seichel. Common sense is too often not so common. Let us learn from our matriarch to use our God-given seichel to effectively help each other and improve the world.

A Community Built on Chessed

In 1966 an eleven-year-old African-American boy moved with his family to a hitherto white neighborhood in Washington. Sitting with his brothers and sisters on the front step of the house, he waited to see how they would be greeted. They were not. Passers-by turned to look at them but no-one gave them a smile or even a glance of recognition. All the fearful stories he had heard about how whites treated blacks seemed to be coming true. Years later, writing about those first days in their new home, he says, “I knew we were not welcome here. I knew we would not be liked here. I knew we would have no friends here. I knew we should not have moved here …”

      As he was thinking those thoughts, a woman passed by on the other side of the road. She turned to the children and with a broad smile said, “Welcome!” Disappearing into the house, she emerged minutes later with a tray laden with drinks and cream-cheese and jelly sandwiches which she brought over to the children, making them feel at home. That moment – the young man later wrote – changed his life. It gave him a sense of belonging where there was none before. It made him realize, at a time when race relations in the United States were still fraught, that a black family could feel at home in a white area and that there could be relationships that were color-blind. Over the years, he learned to admire much about the woman across the street, but it was that first spontaneous act of greeting that became, for him, a definitive memory. It broke down a wall of separation and turned strangers into friends.

      The young man, Stephen Carter, eventually became a law professor at Yale and wrote a book about what he learned that day. He called it Civility. The name of the woman, he tells us, was Sara Kestenbaum, and she died all too young. He adds that it was no coincidence that she was a religious Jew. “In the Jewish tradition,” he notes, such civility is called “chessed – the doing of acts of kindness – which is in turn derived from the understanding that human beings are made in the image of God.”

      “Civility itself,” he adds, “may be seen as part of chessed: it does indeed require kindnesses toward our fellow citizens, including the ones who are strangers, and even when it is hard.”

      “To this day”, he adds, “I can close my eyes and feel on my tongue the smooth, slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches that I gobbled on that summer afternoon when I discovered how a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life forever.”

      Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z’l (whose first yahrtzeit is Monday night) quotes Stephen Carter in his teachings on chessed. As Rabbi Sacks wrote, “Chessed in its many forms became synonymous with Jewish life and one of the pillars on which it stood. Jews performed kindnesses to one another because it was ‘the way of God’ and also because they or their families had had intimate experience of suffering and knew they had nowhere else to turn. It provided an access of grace in dark times. It softened the blow of the loss of the Temple and its rites. Through chessed, Jews humanized fate as, they believed, God’s chessed humanizes the world.”

      This week our community has responded to the tragic murder of Officer Yandy Chirino with an outpouring of chessed that has created a tremendous Kiddush Hashem. A community built on chessed is one that has the strength to continue to thrive and grow, regardless of the challenges that come our way.

Stomachs and Souls

“And Malchizedek the king of Salem brought out bread and wine, and he was a priest to the Most High God. And he blessed him, and he said, Blessed be Abram to the Most High God, Who possesses heaven and earth.” (14:18)

   Malchizedek was both a king and a priest. Why is he described first as a king? Along the same lines, why does Malchizedek first function as a king by providing food and drink? Why don’t we say that more important than the physical nourishment that he can provide is the spiritual nourishment in the form of a blessing. After all, the Torah tells us, “man cannot live on bread alone.”

   Perhaps the answer can be found in a famous quote attributed to Rabbi Yisrael Salanter: “A pious Jew is not one who worried about his fellow man’s soul and his own stomach; a pious Jew worries about his own soul and his fellow man’s stomach.” This sentiment has been expressed in a shorter form as: Your gashmiyus (ie your physical wellbeing) is my ruchniyus (ie helps me realize my spiritual potential).

   The Lubavitcher Rebbe would stand for hours on Sundays to meet with people. Thousands would line up to have their moment with the Rebbe. In addition to giving a blessing, the Rebbe would hand out dollar bills. As thousands of people might wait to see the Rebbe on any given Sunday, there was a significant expense associated with this practice. According to author Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, one of the Rebbe’s assistants suggested that Chabad install large tzedaka boxes at the exit door of the greeting room in order to recoup some of the dollars back to Chabad (or their replacements, as many people kept the dollar that the Rebbe gave them). The Rebbe vetoed the idea as he did not want people to feel coerced into giving their charity to Chabad. Many other Chasidic Rebbes meet with people and give them blessings or answer their questions. Often times those who meet with Chasidic Rebbes feel inspired or inclined to make a donation to a charity of that Rebbe’s choosing. The idea that the Lubavitcher Rebbe would give dollars, instead of receiving dollars, in addition to blessings, was very unique. Rabbi Schneerson once explained that he handed out dollar bills along with blessings, because the outcome of two people meeting should always be that a third person benefits in some way.

   Machizedek also models the lesson that we should utilize all of our God-given talents to benefit others. He was a king, so he could provide Avraham and his entourage with physical nourishment. He was also a priest so he was equipped to bless Avraham as well. Malchizedek could have said, “I’ll give you food- find your spiritual sustenance elsewhere.” Or he could’ve said, “I can give you a blessing, but that’s all I can provide.” Instead he offered all that he could, based on the two roles he played.

   Let us learn these lessons from Malchizedek. We must maximize the benefit our abilities can provide to others. And we must never forget that providing material needs to others is a great way to provide ourselves the spiritual nourishment that we need for our own wellbeing.

 

The Challenge of an Upward Trajectory of Religious Growth

 In Bereishit Rabba (36:3) Rav Berachya suggests that the Torah prefers Moshe over Noach. His proof is that when we are first introduced to Noach we are told that he was “a righteous man” but at the end of the story Noach is described as “a man of the earth”.  Moshe, on the other hand, is first described as “an Egyptian man” but at the end of his life Moshe is described as “man of God”.  How do we understand the vastly different trajectories of these two important Biblical characters?

     The Meshech Chochma suggests that the difference can be explained based on the different focus of each man. Noach’s focus was entirely internal. He saved his immediate family and he personally may have started as a tsaddik, but he had no impact on others. Moshe, on the other hand, started his life not even knowing that he was Jewish. However during the last 40 years of his life he dedicated himself completely to the physical and spiritual well-being of the Jewish People. The Meshech Chochma’s lesson is that the best way to guarantee our own spiritual growth is by caring for others and sharing with others.  

     Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt’l taught that the downward trajectory of Noach’s spiritual status is due to the lack of any opposition post-flood. In the years leading up to the flood, Noach had a clear goal: to avoid falling into the depravity and sinfulness of the rest of society. He had something to fight against and he did so with great courage and conviction. However, after the flood, there was nothing to fight against. All of the sinners had perished. Now Noach had to stop fighting against something and figure out what he wanted to fight for. Instead of playing defense Noach needed to set an affirmative, proactive agenda of meaning and purpose. This can be much more difficult, and Noach couldn’t find his way in a world without a clear villain.

     As we emerge (with God’s help) from the pandemic, both of these lessons are important to consider. First, during CoVID for many of us our major goal seemed like self-preservation. It’s very difficult to focus on others when we feel our very lives and those of our family are in peril. As we emerge from this modern day Mabul, and the health threat has dramatically decreased for those who are vaccinated, we must remind ourselves of the importance of caring for and thinking of others. This is important not only for the sake of the other and for the sake of society, but as we see from our Parsha, caring for others is important for our own self-actualization. Moshe’s model teaches us that we grow as people and become more Godly the more we think about others and extend ourselves.

     Second, for 18 months we have been fighting against the realities that were created due to the pandemic. We fought to survive. We fought to maintain a sense of normalcy. We fought to keep our sanity. We fought for CoVID protocols. We fought against CoVID protocols. Whatever the case may have been, we were not setting the agenda. We were forced to play the hand that God dealt us. We were reacting and responding to situations that felt out of our control. In many ways that phase of the pandemic is ending/ has ended. We now have a chance to set our own agenda. To act in an affirmative and proactive way. To initiate, not just respond. While it sounds marvelous and exciting and hopeful, it can also be overwhelming and paralyzing and difficult.

     Let us learn from Moshe’s trajectory and be ready to set our own agenda. Let us make sure to include others, and causes bigger than ourselves, in that agenda. By doing so we can look forward to an upward trajectory of religious growth.