49 years ago today on the Hebrew calendar I became a Bat Mitzvah. It was chol mo’ed Pesach. My rabbi used to say that every student gets just the right portion for them. I am no exception. The Torah portion, which seems odd for Pesach, continues to enrich me and I continue to learn. How is it possible that there is anything more considering this portion caused me to become a rabbi, I wrote my thesis about it and then a book? Sit back. I have found something new to teach.
This portion picks up the story just after the golden calf. Just after Moses has smashed the 10 Commandments. God and Moses are both tired and angry. God wants Moses to go back up the mountain and get a second set of 10 Commandments. Moses doesn’t want to go. He wants to know why he should lead this stubborn, stiffnecked people. God assures him that God will go with Moses and lighten his burden and give him rest. Moses wants to understand who this god is and demands to see this invisible voice. God reminds Moses that no one can see God’s face and live but that God will hide him in a cleft, a cranny, a crevice of the rock and all God’s goodness, God’s essential nature will pass before him.
We know that essential nature. Those are the 13 Attributes of the Divine. Adonai, Adonai, el rachum v’chanun. The Lord, the Lord, God, merciful and gracious. Full of lovingkindess.
For me there has been a puzzle. There are at least two words for love in Hebrew. Ahavah—like in V’ahavta et Adonai Elochecha, You shall love the Lord your God. Or V’ahavta et rayecha kamocha, Love your neighbor as yourself. But our word today, Chesed, is often translated as lovingkindness. This is a puzzle to me. What is the difference between ahavah and chesed? Today, just today I think I solved it!
Ahavah is emotive. Just like when Isaac took Rebecca to his mother’s tent and he loved her.
“Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her, and thus found comfort after his mother’s death.” (Gen. 24:67)
Chesed as love is an action, even though it is a noun.
We talk a lot about chesed this week. As we count the omer, 49 days, 7 weeks, the first week is all about chesed. Today is the second day of the counting of the Omer, as we did last night. Mystically it is seen as Gevurah of Chesed, the strength of lovingkindness.
“Chesed grows in those who do deeds of Chesed. At the same time Chesed needs to be balanced with Gevurah. Chesed is G-d Giving Himself unrestrictedly. If He were to do that then Chesed would totally overwhelm creation. So G-d Balances His Chesed with Gevurah (restraint). We need to find this balance in our lives. To perform an act of kindness, without personal gain, is the highest degree of pure and enduring human worth. Kind deeds between one person and another induce a corresponding flow of kindness from G-d that sustains the world.” Maharal of Prague Pirkei Avos Artscroll page 17
Like Benjamin Franklin did in his journals by working on 13 character traits, some Jews do the same thing with the study of mussar. One of those traits is chesed.
For this morning I want to dive deeper into chesed. How are loving, how are we kind, how do we act with lovingkindness.
Micah explained it: God has told you what is good! What does your God ask of you, that you do justice, love loving kindness, and walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8 Sometimes this is translated as “love mercy” but the idea of loving lovingkindness I think is closer to the Hebrew and makes the point stronger.
The Talmud teaches: “To walk humbly with your God”; this is referring to taking the indigent dead out for burial and accompanying a poor bride to her wedding canopy, both of which must be performed without fanfare. The Gemara summarizes: And are these matters not inferred a fortiori? If, with regard to matters that tend to be conducted in public, as the multitudes participate in funerals and weddings, the Torah says: Walk humbly, then in matters that tend to be conducted in private, e.g., giving charity and studying Torah, all the more so should they be conducted privately.” (Sukkah 49b)
This then begins a list. Lovingkindness, We need to take care of the needy bride and bury the dead as acts of lovingkindness.
We know that Pirke Avot 2:1 teaches us that the world is sustained by three things. We just sang this as we took the Torah out—on Torah, on Avodah, service or worship, and on gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkingness.
It is a balancing act. You need all three legs of the stool. The fact that chesed is one of the three pillars on which the world itself stands underlines how very important this soul-trait must be. One of those pillars is ACTS of lovingkindness.
Doing gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness is the way we emulate God. It is how we walk with God. Two of my very favorite quotes, precisely because they are about our verse in Torah today are from Sifre Deuteronomy Ekev and Sotah 14:
To walk in God’s ways” (Deuteronomy 11:22). These are the ways of the Holy One: “gracious and compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and granting pardon.” (Exodus 34:6). All who are called in God’s name will survive.(Joel 3:5) How is it possible for a person to be called by God’s name? Rather, God is called “merciful”—so too, you should be merciful. God is called “gracious” as it says, “God, merciful and gracious” (Psalms 145:8)—so too, you should be gracious and give gifts for nothing. God is called “just” as it says, “For God is righteous and loves righteousness” (Psalms 11:7)—so too, you should be just.” God is called “merciful”: “For I am merciful, says the Lord.” (Jeremiah 3:12) so too you be merciful. That is why it is said, “And it shall come to pass that all who are called in God’s name will survive.” This means that just as God is gracious, compassionate, and forgiving, you too must be gracious, compassionate, and forgiving. [Translation by Rabbi Jill Jacobs] Sifre Deut Ekev
Rabbi Samlai taught: With regard to the Torah, its beginning is an act of kindness and its end is an act of kindness. Its beginning is an act of kindness, as it is written: “And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin, and clothed them” (Genesis 3:21). And its end is an act of kindness, as it is written: “And he was buried in the valley in the land of Moab” (Deuteronomy 34:6). (Sotah 14a)
But lovingkindness is not just charity or warm sympathy as Alan Moranis, the father of modern day mussar points out,
“The English “kindness” suggests a warm sympathy, a benevolent feeling. The Greek word charis, which denotes kindness (and is the root of the word “charity”) is treated by Aristotle (in his Rhetoric) as one of the 15 emotions. Chesed, in contrast, is not an emotion but an act of benevolence. In fact, if a person does something that is helpful for someone else, and yet does so reluctantly, resentfully, or even spitefully, the deed nevertheless remains an act of chesed because the definition revolves around the benefit done (or at least attempted), not the feeling behind the action…. Chesed involves stretching beyond your current comfort zone to be a source of benevolence to others. It guides our behavior in ways we might not have chosen if we allow ourselves to be guided only by our own inclinations and feelings as they currently steer us. And that is how we grow… We need to be cautious [] around the almost universal translation of the word chesed as “lovingkindness.” To my ear, and maybe to yours, too, loving-kindness suggests being nice. . . Chesed involves acts that sustain the other. This is a dimension of the notion that doesn’t come through so clearly when [we translate chesed as loving-kindness. In the Jewish view, it isn’t enough to hold warm thoughts in our heart or to wish each other well. We are meant to offer real sustenance to one another, and the ways in which we can do that are innumerable: we can offer . . . time, love, empathy, service, an open ear, manual assistance, a letter written, a call made, and on and on… [Action] is the key to opening the heart. It is too easy to think good thoughts and say the right things but then just continue to be stuck in the same old ways. We’re too easy to deceive, especially self deceive. Action is required. Then, through experience, the heart learns and opens, setting off a chain reaction of hearts opening and connecting leading right up to openness and connection to God.” – Alan Morinis, Everyday Holiness
We will end on this note:
The word Pesach, I learned this year maybe broken into two words. Peh meaning mouth and Sach meaning conversation.
“And Rabbi Elazar said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “She opens her mouth with wisdom, and a Torah of kindness is on her tongue” (Proverbs 31:26)? The Gemara asks: Is there, then, a Torah of kindness and a Torah that is not of kindness? Rather, it is Torah studied for its own sake that is a Torah of kindness, as one studies it wholeheartedly; and it is Torah studied not for its own sake but for some ulterior motive that is a Torah that is not of kindness. Some say that it is Torah studied in order to teach it to others that is a Torah of kindness; it is Torah studied with the intent of not teaching it to others that is a Torah that is not of kindness.” (Sukkah 49b).
I try, I do honestly try to open my mouth, my peh with wisdom and with kindness. I am still working on it. This, then is a public apology to Simon, who bears the brunt of my not being kind when I come home too tired or too hungry. This why mussar and counting the omer and trying to be like G-d is not just a one and done. We work on it every day and every year as we count the omer.
Let us open our mouths then with these words from Psalms, taught in the melody by Rabbi Menachem Creditor:
Olam Chesed Yibenah. The world will be build on love. (Psalm 89.3)
I will build this world on love. You will build this world on love. And if we build this world on love, then G-d will build this world on love.