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This week, February 14-20, is being recognized as Random Acts of Kindness Week. There is a CNN article circulating the internet this week about graciousness. It pointed to a recent report about Four-star Army General Peter Chiarelli being mistaken for a waiter at a recent dinner with White House officials. One of President Obama’s advisors, only seeing his dress slacks that looked a great deal like their server’s, mistakenly asked him for a glass of wine. He could have admonished her for her mistake. Instead, he graciously went ahead and poured her a glass in order to avoid her feeling embarrassment. When she looked up and realized who he was, she apologized, and he again defended her, agreeing that his uniform is sometimes mistaken by other people as well.

Another story shared in the article was about basketball great, Karl Malone. One time, while at the airport, a woman mistook him for a skycap and asked for help with her luggage. Without wanting to embarrass her, Karl agreed, and followed her right out to her car and helped her load everything into the trunk. It wasn’t until the woman said thank you and offered him a tip that he explained that he wasn’t a luggage handler at all, but instead an NBA all-star. He did it out of the kindness of his heart and didn’t want payment or credit for his act.

What can we learn from these and other similar stories? Whether we are big or small, we can really be giants by being kind to others. And that is what random acts of kindness are all about. We at Jewish Treats encourage you to make random acts of kindness a habit for the rest of your lives.

You can read the full article on CNN.com entitled “4-star general, 5-star grace” here: http://bit.ly/gzWIKy

Learn more about the topic of kindness in Judaism with this post from our Jewish Treats blog entitled, Random Acts of Kindness.

Random Acts of Kindness

An entire generation of North Americans hear the words “random acts of kindness” and immediately think of Oprah Winfrey. Without question, the queen of afternoon television has done amazing things and, in the process, reminded millions of her fans and followers of an extremely important ethic in society. Acts of kindness, known in Hebrew as gm’eelut chasadim or simply chesed, are so important, in fact, that the Talmudic sage Shimon the Righteous considered it one of the three things that sustain the world (along with Torah and service to God–Pirkei Avot 1:2).

Often, when a discussion turns to “good acts,” people pull out their checkbooks to make a charitable donation. Donating one’s money as charity is a beautiful and important mitzvah, that is known in Hebrew as tzedakah, which comes from the word for righteousness. However, the sages make a distinction between tzedakah and chesed:

“Our Rabbis taught: In three respects are acts of kindness superior to charity: Charity can be done only with one’s money, but acts of kindness can be done with one’s body and one’s money. Charity can be given only to the poor, acts of kindness both to the rich and the poor. Charity can be given to the living only, acts of kindness can be done both to the living and to the dead” (Sukkah 49b).

Anyone can perform acts of kindness. More importantly, acts of kindness can be small, seemingly insignificant gestures (holding the door for someone, passing along a resume, or preparing a meal for a new mother and her family) or large (letting someone live in your house while they look for a new home, chauffeuring someone to multiple doctor visits). And no matter how simple the act may seem, to the recipient, that kindness is priceless.

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