In this week’s parsha, Chayei Sarah, Sarah Imeinu has died at the age of one hundred and twenty seven years old.  After being maspid (eulogizing) his eishes chayil, and crying for her, Avraham must deal with the burial arrangements.  He purchases the Me’arat ha’Machpela from Ephron the Chitti for four hundred silver shekels, and then he buries his wife.

Once Sarah has died, Avraham realizes there is no one to carry on the mesorah and beliefs that he has founded.  Hence, he understands that it is time for Yitzchak - who will father the next generation - to marry.  

Avraham sends the steward of his home, unnamed in the Torah text, but whom the Sages identify as Eliezer, to find a wife for Yitzchak.  He is to journey back to Avraham’s homeland and bring back a girl.  How shall Eliezer know who the right one is?

Interestingly, Avraham gives Eliezer no criteria by which to find the shidduch. However, so obvious and foundational is gemilus chassadim (performance of acts of loving-kindness) in the life and home of Avraham Avinu, that Eliezer intuitively knows that this is the only middah that he is required to look for in the girl.  If she will give him to drink when he arrives in town at the well, and she will give his camels to drink, then she is the girl who will be the next Eim b’Yisrael.

As Hashgacha would have it, the first girl he meets at the well is Rivka, the daughter of Besuel, who is a son of Milka and Nachor, the brother of Avraham.  When she gives Eliezer to drink, along with his camels, he bedecks her with a golden nose ring and two bracelets on her hands, and he knows his mission has been a success.  Of course, he must now go meet her family, relay the story of the shidduch, and then take Rivka back to Canaan, to marry Yitzchak.  But, in essence, once he sees her perform acts of kindness for a stranger - in the way of his master, Avraham - he knows that she is the one. 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z’l writes, “Hesed - providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, or assistance to the poor; visiting the sick, comforting mourners, and providing a dignified burial for all - are constitutive of Jewish life.  During the many centuries of exile and dispersion Jewish communities were built around these needs.  There were hevrot, ‘friendly societies,’ for each of them” (Essays on Ethics, p.29).  

Today, we have Gemachs (free-loan societies) for every need imaginable.  There are ear-protection gemachs for babies for weddings, bentcher gemachs, tablecloth gemachs, flowers-for-simchas gemachs, mothers milk gemachs, interest-free money-lending gemachs, bridal gown gemachs, sister/mother of the bride gown gemachs, shaitel gemachs, and hachnasas kallah home-good gemachs.  This is but a few of the myriad Gemachs with which our communities are blessed.  

Mi k’amcha Yisrael - who is like Your nation Israel, goy echad ba’aretz - one nation in the land (Shmuel II 7:23).  

While we continue to be amazed by the giving, selfless, and astounding degrees of chessed that exists amongst our people, we should not think that this is a newer ideal that was founded in more recent time.  Rabbi Sacks quotes a remarkable passage from a book called Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, that outlines the chessed societies that existed almost four-hundred years ago in the Jewish community of Rome.  

Rabbi Sacks writes that, “In seventeenth-century Rome, for example, there were seven societies dedicated to the provision of clothes, shoes, linen, beds, and warm winter bed coverings for children, the poor, widows and prisoners.  There were two societies providing trousseaus, dowries, and the loan of jewelry to poor brides.  There was one for visiting the sick, another bringing help to families who had suffered bereavement, and others to perform the last rites for those who had died - purification before burial and the burial service itself.  Eleven fellowships existed for educational and religious aims - study and prayer, another raised alms for Jews living in the Holy Land, and others were involved in the various activities associated with the circumcision of new-born boys.  Yet others provided the poor with the means to fulfill commands such as mezuzot for their doors, oil for the Hanukka lights, and candles for Shabbat” (Essays on Ethics, p.30).

It is truly incredible to ponder that four-hundred years ago, before the days of technology, WhatsApp broadcasts, cars, computers, electricity, and the like (all of which make our acts of chessed so much easier to perform), the Jewish community of Rome was founded on so many different chessed societies.  

Not for naught do the Sages say: שְׁלֹשָׁה סִימָנִים יֵשׁ בְּאוּמָּה זוֹ: הָרַחְמָנִים, וְהַבַּיְישָׁנִין, וְגוֹמְלֵי חֲסָדִים, there are three signs that identify one as part of the Jewish nation.  These three markings, or signs, are: one who is merciful, one who is bashful/modest, and members of a nation that performs acts of chessed, one for another (Yevamos 79a).

Rabbi Sacks writes that, “As G-d acts towards us with love, so we are called on to act lovingly to one another.  The world does not operate solely on the basis of impersonal principles like power or justice, but also on the deeply personal basis of vulnerability, attachment, care and concern, recognizing us as individuals with unique needs and potentialities … (Kindness) is what led Eliezer to choose Rivka to become Yitzchak’s wife and thus the first Jewish bride.  Kindness brings redemption to the world and … it can change lives” (Essays on Ethics, p.31). 

In a world of cruelty and turbulence, let us increase our acts of kindness one to another, with acceptance, love, care and compassion for our fellow Jew, so that together, we may indeed effect redemption.  

בברכת בשורות טובות ושבת שלום