Here is one of my favorite stories that highlights the Jewish value of kindness. As the story goes in Crown Heights, there was a Jew, Yankel, who owned a bakery. He survived the camps. He once said, “You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,” he said. “Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew – from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence.

Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me. The old man survived because somebody kept him
warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else.

The secret of Judaism is that being kind is not just a nice thing to do for the person in need, but it is a commandment for the benefit of the doer of good deeds.

I was thinking about this idea when reading Mishpatim, this week’s Torah portion. There we learn a mess of commandments. To be exact, we learn 12% of all of the commandments in this week’s Torah reading. Many of these have to do with looking out for those in need. One of them reads:

If you take your neighbor’s garment in pledge, you must return it before the sun sets; it is the only available clothing—it is what covers their skin. In what else shall they sleep? Therefore, if [your neighbor] cries out to Me, I will pay heed, for I am compassionate. (Exodus 22:25-26)

Business is not just business. Might does not make right. As a lender we have an obligation to the humanity of the person borrowing from you beyond their value as a client. When we see Judaism as a unending list of laws, it seems cold. But when you see the care for those in need we are moved by its warmth, compassion and passion. Rabbi Israel Salanter said, “Someone else’s material needs are my spiritual responsibility.” In warming the other, our hearts are warmed. In saving the other, we are saved. Is seeking the other, we find the Other.