April 27, 2001

"Victory and Triumph - the Merit of Chesed"

Shmuel said, "This world differs from the Messianic Era only in respect
to servitude of the exiled, for it is said, ‘for the poor shall not cease out
of the land' (Devarim 15:11; also see Rambam, Yad, Kings 12b)" (Shabbat 63a)

Woes, trials and tribulations are to remain with us even in post-Messianic
times.  Yet, the Torah places special emphasis upon the poor and their
economic needs rather than physical or spiritual ones.  Chesed is the Torah
antidote to poverty, and Jews are to be forever blessed with this mitzvah. 
Chesed is by no means limited to sharing material wealth, nor is monetary
paucity the only form of impoverishment, but those destitute, diseased and
despaired are included as poor and  will forever remain with us,
necessitating mitzvot classified as chesed.

Our generation is witness to the most extraordinary chesed achievements in all Jewish history.  Most Jews had a share in the ingathering of the Holocaust remnant.  After the Holocaust,  homeless and stateless Jews experienced abandonment, fear and tragedy as non other before.  Orphans, widows and widowers, along with young lovers and broken down ships, came to the land of their fathers, and at the same time mountain Jews, forever incarcerated in deep isolation in places known only to cartographers and a Benjamin of Tudelo, arrived in Israel to meet strangely attired people from lands where Jews were denied civil rights and human stature.  From the Sudan in the arid deserts of Africa to the men and women whose eyes were blackened by the horrors they witnessed and whose nostrils clogged from the fumes of crematoria gases, Jews in America and elsewhere opened their hearts and wallets.

Jews are known for their self-criticism and with some justification.  We are a stiff-necked people whose indigenous obduracy is given to excessive individualism. . ."a wise and knowing people," but at times too smart for their own good.  Yes, it is true, we are egocentric, at times neurotic, and more often divisive.  But G-d, looking down from heaven, must surely take note of our extraordinary philanthropy and the giving nature of our people. 

"But now I will not be unto the residue of this people as in the former days, says the L-rd of hosts.  For the seed shall be prosperous; the vine shall give her fruit and the ground shall give her increase and the heavens shall give their due; and will cause the remnant of this people to possess all these things." (Zachariah 8: 11 & 12) The bedraggled and down-trodden, the despised among all the nations, have made gardens like Eden in a desert that blooms, built towers reaching into the skies, and in the heights above soar planes with a Star of David on their wings, while ships bring fruit and advanced technoloy to the starved and naked.  It is not at all what "the residue of Jewry" had known in its years of exile and the early days of Israel.  "For I have said chesed shall forever build." 

If for no other reason, the chesed of this Jewish generation is deserving of blessing as none other before.  After the Holocaust, we again became a compassionate people.  In a swelling sea of narcissism, Jews are an over-flowing reservoir of kindness and love, willing hearts and giving souls. 

Moshiach has yet to arrive. Both in Israel and in the vast Jewish diaspora, sin is pervasive as moral and ethical conduct dissipates into swelling seas of hedonism and alien values. But Jewish philanthropy and chesed does yet prevail. 

Will successive generations of Jews feel the hurt and experience the passion for giving, sharing and lending?  Much of our Jewish heritage has been devoured by assimilation.  Will our successors sustain chesed while enveloped by today's torrential rain of hedonism and self-gratification?  Will Jews still cry for the agony of their brothers, the impoverishment of souls and the hunger of the poor? 

"Zion shall be redeemed by justice, and they that return to her by righteousness." (Isaiah 1:27) When Jews returned to giving, Zion's return began.  And to this day, they come from all corners of the earth.  "And it shall assemble the outcasts of Israel and the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth." (Isaiah 11:12) No greater love has been shown, nor a more uplifting experience exists to witness the thousands yet coming from the hateful lands of the old czars and communists.  And from the innards of black Africa, the forgotten souls of Ethiopian brothers and sisters descend on this very day to a field in the Ayalon Valley named for the father of the Jewish state, Ben Gurion. 

Arabs failed to comprehend the strange power we the Jews possess.  Not alone, the genius of our scientists and scholars, the renewed devotion to Torah and the search for faith but the old and indelible Jewish heart of Abraham, the father of our people and faith, called chesed "opening hand and heart" to the near and distant.  This is our weapon of choice, a power greater than all might and force whose path leads to peace. 

People who send their sons and daughters to certain death as suicide bombers and who teach their young sons to throw rocks on innocent neighbors are bereft of soul and future.  The bullet that maims and kills another will do the same to its own kin and people. Ultimately, a people without chesed will self-destruct, and Jews, endowed with this greatest of Divine gifts, will triumph. 

Shabbat Shalom