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The Torah of Kindness

A Bar Mitzvah drasha by Igor Finkelshteyn, with the help of mom and Rabbi Finkelstein

In Judaism, there are many rules and laws. Someone once said that if baseball caps were a Jewish law, there would be rules of how big or small they could be, how long the brim could be, how far the elastic could extend, what blessing you would say upon wearing it, how long you had to wear it, what colors it could be, and what the punishment would be for not wearing it. 

Some people think that the Torah is too harsh, that there are too many rules, and too many punishments. 

But, my portion this morning actually speaks a lot about kindness. It speaks of helping and supporting one’s neighbors in need. Ve-he-che-zakta bo, you should give strength to the downtrodden. Va-chai ee-mach, he should live with you. You should see to it that your neighbor can get back on track and live respectably among his brethren. It speaks of bailing out your neighbors who have lost their homes, fields, their very dignity, and at times even their freedom. We are told to be kind, supportive and helpful. 

But then my portion does start to sound very harsh. It says that if we do not follow the commandments we will suffer tremendous poverty, starvation, and degradation. Here the Torah seems quite severe. How can we reconcile a Torah which preaches compassion and kindness while predicting and threatening such great suffering? One might answer that there is no contradiction. When the Torah warns of great suffering, G-d is actually being kind to us.  

This could be understood with a parable. There were 2 children who didn’t go to school and were just playing instead. The parents of one child said that they really didn’t care and allowed the child to play. The parents of the other child punished him and made him make up his schoolwork. Who loves their child more, the one who punished him or the one who didn’t care? Clearly, a loving parent will try to guide the children on the correct path. When the child becomes an adult, and he has to support his family, he will appreciate his parents who made him work hard and study. 

There is no contradiction between G-d’s harsh punishments for sinners and G-d’s compassion as expressed in the laws to help our neighbors. The best proof that G-d loves us is the fact that He cares enough about us to guide us and rebuke us. 

When we speak about our portion this week teaching about helping others, the Torah gives us several useful guidelines for doing so. Firstly, the Torah uses the words, that we should support our friends who have fallen on hard times, and va-chai eemach, they should live with you. There are 2 ways to give charity and help to others. We can give and help others with an air of superiority and one-up-man-ship or we can give with a spirit of humility and brotherliness, eemach, from a position of being with or next to the other, not aloof or above. 

As Maimonides writes, “one who gives tzedakah to the poor with a bad attitude and without eye contact, even if he gave a thousand gold pieces, he lost his merit and he forfeits it…” Maimonides demands that the person actually have a conversation with the recipient of kindness. You have to feel for him or you have missed the essential message of tzedakah, Jewish charity. If tzedakah is not eemach, out of a sense of true empathy and closeness, then it is not Jewish charity at all. 

The second principle of kindness one can glean from the portion is that one cannot wait for a person to fall economically or emotionally. A person must help others before they fall. Once they fall, it is too late. How do we derive this principle? The Torah states, “ve-chi yamuch ahicha” when your neighbor goes down low, is depressed, has fallen on bad times, or has lost his former wealth and glory, we should help him.  

Rashi derives from here that we should help people before they fall. He compares it to a donkey that has a big load on his back and begins to falter. If we help him then, it will only take one person to get the donkey back on track. If we wait until he falls, even 10 people cannot lift him back up.  

In New York City, there are many homeless people. The social workers found that if they could help the person before they became homeless, then there was still hope. Once the person became homeless, there was very little that could be done to get them back on their feet.  

Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the great thinkers of this century, said that we have to pick up our fallen brothers no matter how low they fall. At times a person’s world is destroyed, he loses his job, his family, everything he owns. But we learn from G-d that even when a world is destroyed we must rebuild it. The Rabbis in the Midrash teach that before the world came to be, G-d would make worlds and destroy them. If we see that someone’s world has been destroyed, we have to help him to rebuild. 

Today we finish the book of Leviticus, Vayikra. It speaks mostly about sacrifices. However, as we come toward the end, it speaks of kindness to others. As Hoshea says (6, 6) “For it is kindness I desire and not sacrifice.” How are kindness and sacrifice related? How can kindness replace sacrifice? 

If we look at the very beginning of this book of Vayikra, it says “Adam ki yakriv mikem”- when a person sacrifices, he offers of himself, mikem. The book ends in my portion the same way, thereby creating a sense of balance in the book. The last set of laws were the laws for one who says he would like to offer to the Holy Temple, the value of an individual. The Torah lists the values of each age group of Jews. The Torah is concluding this book by saying that ultimately, if we wish to give to G-d, we must give ourselves to G-d. 

What is kindness? Giving of ourselves is kindness. This is the highest form of self-sacrifice and it is therefore an appropriate ending to this book of sacrifice. 

The Chafetz Chaim, in his book, Ahavat Hesed, says that through Torah study we sanctify our intellectual powers, while through acts of kindness we sanctify our physical powers.  

More broadly speaking, it is not only the book of Vayikra which is about kindness, but the whole Torah is kindness. The Gerer Rebbe, the Sefas Emes, states that there is not one letter in the Torah that is not so kind that it couldn’t make the dead rise, like Boaz in the book of Ruth brought life back to Ruth and Naomi, it is only that we don’t know how to interpret the Torah. The Torah is a repository, a reservoir of kindness, but we don’t always read it or practice it in a way that brings out its potential as a book of kindness. 

This explains why we will read the book of Ruth on Shavuos in a few weeks. On this holiday we received the Torah, and since the Torah is kindness, we read the book of kindness on that day. Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk in his work, the Meshech Hochmah, says that this explains why the laws of leaving wheat for the poor are found within the section of last week’s portion which discusses Shavuos. The holiday of the giving of the Torah is not complete unless we are kind to our fellow people.   

In Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers, we learn that any Torah not accompanied by work is to be lost. The Baal Sham Tov interprets this to mean that any Torah study that doesn’t lead to helping others is not Torah study at all. 

Jews have learned this lesson of kindness well. We have helped our own in the case of the Russian exodus, the Ethiopian exodus, and in Jewish relief efforts in Kosovo as well. I hope that I will always appreciate this central teaching of Judaism, to care and be kind to others. And hopefully, if I do this, I will merit to see G-d be kind to me, as the Talmud in Shabbat states, “One who has compassion on others, will have compassion on him from Heaven.”  May we have mercy on each other, and in the merit of that, may G-d have mercy on us.