By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend,
The first leg of the trip to New York was aggravating.
We had annoyingly obnoxious people sitting next to us.
We were not seated together and asked the few people sitting between us to change seats with us and allow us to sit together. Although the alternative seats were better or at least not worse than their current seats, they didn’t agree to help us by moving their seats.
(To be fair I will say that maybe there is another side to the story that I don’t know about, but to me it looked like they were simply not interested in making the effort to stand up an sit down in a different seat).
It was unpleasant. In the many trips I have made over the last three decades I don’t recall encountering this kind of unfriendly behavior.
In the scheme of things, it’s no big deal. We got to New York safely thank G-d, we are about to celebrate our daughter Miriam’s wedding Baruch Hashem and a little bit of unpleasantness on a flight shouldn’t really rankle me.
But everything is by Divine Providence. And thus, I ask myself, what can I learn from this experience.
The simple lesson is, don’t act like that.
The people of Sodom acted like that. Hashem so detested this radically unkind behavior that they and their cities were overturned and destroyed.
The definition of Sodom-like behavior is when one doesn’t allow for someone else to benefit from them, even when there is no loss to the one giving the favor.
For example, if you have an internet connection that someone can use without causing any danger or delay to yourself or your family, denying someone else access to your internet connection is Sodom-like behavior.
Not wanting someone else to receive some benefit favor from you, even when there is no loss to you, is not proper behavior in a moral society.
Society is comprised of give and take. While one may not always be in a position to give to others, at least one should not protest when someone benefits from you without costing you. To prevent this kind of sharing is a Sodom-like negative behavior.
Hashem blessed me to hear a story upon arrival in NY that gave me a reminder of how giving and sharing a person can be.
My friend related:
I was walking down the street with my father. I was a young kid and wanted ice cream. I asked my father if I he could buy me an ice cream. My father is a very kind man and agreed that I could have an ice cream. We stopped in to the grocery store on the way home. The storekeeper didn’t agree to put the ice cream on the family bill as the bill was too high and not yet paid. My father tried to give the store the modest check that he had received from the Yeshiva that he worked for. The storekeeper, not being convinced that the Yeshiva check would clear the bank, told my father to first cash the check at the check cashing company.
We carried down the block in the direction of the check cashing shop and met a director of one of the local schools. He told my father that he was desperate and didn’t have money to pay some of the teachers and that some of the teachers wouldn’t have food on the table. My father took out the check and told him that he could cash it at the check cashing office and apply it as a donation to help the struggling teachers.
My friend concluded his story by telling me that this lesson stayed with him for the rest of his life. His father had always said ‘the only thing that really belongs to you, is what you give away’. I had now discovered that it wasn’t just a altruistic slogan. By his living example, the ethos and values of proper Jewish living came to life.
It was inspirational to hear about the selflessness of my friends father.
Someone recently told me a similar story about my own father, may he live a long and happy life.
It was in the 1960’s and my father was studying at the central Lubavitch Yeshiva at 770 Eastern Parkway. A young man who was acquainted with me father, wanted to try out the Yeshiva that my father was attending. However, the young man hadn’t found a place to sleep during his visit to the Yeshiva. My father told him that there was an empty bed in his dormitory room that he could sleep in. He came. Only a few days later when he woke up in the middle of the night and saw my father sleeping on the floor, did he realize that my father had given up his bed for him.
This act of kindness so much affected him that he decided to switch over and enroll to be a fulltime student in the Lubavitch Yeshiva.
In his words ‘if this the kind of students that this Yeshiva produces, I want to be a student here’.
We have the ability to choose how we act towards others.
It is all too easy to fall into the apathy and laziness of not caring about others. This can even degenerate further to Sodom-style behavior.
If we choose, however, to put forth some effort, we can develop a second nature of giving and caring for others.
Just last week we received the Torah on the holiday of Shavuot.
The core of the Torah is about acting lovingly to others like you would like others to act lovingly to yourself.
This is the basis of myriads of mitzvahs and laws.
The premise of the Torah is that our human natures can be adapted and trained to be less selfish and more selfless.
Just because we ‘feel like doing something’ or ‘don’t feel like doing it’ doesn’t mean that this is what we should be doing.
Sometimes we want what is negative. And sometimes we refrain from expending effort to do what is positive.
Perhaps we can understand it from the analogy of exercise.
Overeating without doing physical activity leads to being overweight and to being out of shape.
Following our natural tendencies just because ‘I feel like it’ without assessing if this is something positive in the eyes of our Creator or not is not the Torah way.
The Torah teaches us that man’s job is to toil. One of the important parts of the effort G-d wants us to put forth is to correct our non-positive human tendencies should they exist.
If G-d forbid you find yourself being mean, cantankerous and saying no to helping someone else for no good reason, it is time to schedule a ‘check-up’ with your spiritual guide. You need to fine tune your ‘fitness training’ to be healthier and G-dlier.
I had another realization.
These obnoxious people irked me so much.
It was quite unusual. This made me realize that usually, I am surrounded by nice and kind people.
Perhaps one of the lessons from this encounter is to give thanks go Hashem for the wonderful people He has surrounded me with.
Thank you Hashem for the kind, nice, respectful and loving people I and blessed to engage with.
And thank you my dear friend for reading my emails and allowing our discussion to continue to develop. May we continue to make progress together, in getting closer to the Almighty as we journey through life
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yosef Kantor