‘To be a Jew is to be asked to give’
TThe world stands on three things; one of them is kindness
HE JEWISH community has built an incredible suite of charities that give life to so many. Charities that provide food, sustaining those who are in need. Charities that save lives, through medical provision for both physical and mental ailments. Even charities that literally bring life into the world through support for fertility treatments.
Judaism’s teachings clearly underpin the value of giving tzedakah (charity) and doing chesed (acts of kindness). Think of the matriarchs and patriarchs and their stories — like Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality for example. The Torah is full of stories of care, love and self-sacrifice. We are told to be kind to strangers, for we too were once strangers, when we were slaves in the Land of Israel (Devarim 6:21). There are numerous laws relating to our responsibility to the poor.
We can easily see how the life of a recipient of charity or of an act of kindness is changed. But how do tzedakah and chesed change the life of the giver?
In the Mishnah in Pirkei Avot (1:2), Ethics of our Fathers, we are told that the world stands on three things, one of them being acts of kindness — the world would not survive without them. Similarly on an individual level, the Yom Kippur prayer, Unetanah Tokef, lists several harsh decrees that can fall upon one who has sinned. However the verse ends, “But teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer) and tzedakah (charity; righteousness) can remove the decree”.
According to this text, we can change our fate through acts of charity and kindness. Consider the following ancient story from the Talmud, (Shabbat 156b): Rabbi Akiva had a daughter, and Chaldean astrologers told him that on the day she was to be married, a snake would bite her and she would die. On her wedding day, she took the ornamental pin from her hair and stuck it into a hole in the wall for safekeeping, and it happened that it entered directly into the eye of the snake. In the morning, she took out the pin, and the snake came out with it.
Her father Rabbi Akiva said to her: “What did you do to merit being saved from the snake?” She told him: “In the evening a poor person came and knocked on the door, and everyone was preoccupied with the wedding feast and nobody heard him. I stood and took the portion that you had given me and gave it to him.” Rabbi Akiva said to her: “You performed a mitzvah, and you were saved in its merit.” Rabbi Akiva went out and applied the verse: “And charity will save from death” (Proverbs 10:2).
The Talmud (Shabbat 127a) points out that there are six things that we can enjoy both in this world and in the World to Come, once our souls have departed from our bodies.
Two of these relate to our topic; hospitality towards guests and visiting the sick. The Gemara is clearly telling us that while we may not see the reward or benefit of some mitzvot until the World to Come, when it comes to acts of chesed, we get enjoyment from them even now, before the next phase in our soul’s
The one who does chesed will receive chesed
existence. Not only that, but according to Mesillat Yesharim (The Path of the Just) by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, written in c.1738, “the one who does chesed will receive chesed” (19:32).
This is an application of Judaism’s version of karma, that how we treat others is how we ourselves will be treated.
Consider some social science studies. The UK’s National Council for Voluntary Organisations conducted a survey[1] on people who had volunteered at least once in 2019.
Ninety-three per cent saw a positive change in their lives. Seventy-seven per cent said it improved their mental health and wellbeing. Fiftythree per cent said it improved their physical health too.
Many other studies have been done to show that giving time and help to others can reduce mortality risk and it can bring you closer to a community and connect you with others — these social factors themselves have their own health benefits.
The late former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, says beautifully, “To be a Jew is to be asked to give”[2]. In Parashat Ki Tisa, God tells Moses to take a census of the Jewish people, not by simply counting heads, but by collecting half a shekel from each person. Rabbi Sacks explains that this was done to show our strength is not in numbers; we are a small nation. It is not in our cleverness or our talent. It is in what we give to others.