Imagine that you are lying in your bed, suffering from pain, after a delicate operation. Your whole body hurts, and you can barely move. Then you open your aching eyes and see through the window your parents and your grandmother who are standing outside trying to look for you, but they do not know in which room you are. Suddenly, like a leopard, you get up from your bed, you disconnect from the monitor, you run trying not to get the serum, you go down the hall, you hug them and you are immensely happy. You don’t understand how, but it seems that the pain has disappeared.
The parable of this story is our Patriarch Abraham who, on the most painful day after his circumcision, runs to find three travelers who were far from home under intense heat, to invite them to his home and serve them the best delicacies. The difference is that they were not his parents or his grandmother, but simple strangers. What was it that prompted Abraham to desperately run to invite strangers, and how did he accomplish it while feeling so much pain? his inspiration was God, who created the world based on Goodness. He had no obligation to do so. Furthermore, our Sages teach us that one of the pillars that uphold the world is Goodness, and without it it would be destroyed. But why is Kindness so important? In Hebrew the stork is called Hasida “kind”, however, the Sages say that the stork does good only with its kind, and this is somewhat derogatory. Without Goodness the world could not continue its course. Can you imagine what would happen if the doctors said: From now on we will only treat the doctors, if the army cared only for its soldiers, or the teachers only educated their families? it would be a catastrophe! But it is not enough to “do kindness”, the most important thing is how you do it and the intention you put. A doctor cannot operate without desire, without passion, and if there is one like that, I would not like to be in his hands.
And what happened to the pain that Abraham felt? Rav Noach Weinberg of blessed memory says that, in anything you do in life, if you focus on the goal, you will not feel the pain, for example, training hard in the gym, or studying many hours a day to become an engineer. . On the other hand, if you focus on the pain, you will never feel pleasure, that is why Basket players do not feel pain while playing, although they run, they jump, they perspire, but if you take the ball from them, and you tell them: Run, sweat, jump They will not last more than a few minutes, because you took away the most important thing they had, they no longer have what to focus on. The passion that Abraham felt for inviting strangers to his tent and making them feel good was so great that his pain vanished, for his whole being breathed goodness. And this should lead us to question: Are we kind enough to those around us, our partner, children, neighbors? Do we put passion to our acts of kindness, or do we do it automatically? When we help someone, let’s not forget to put a smile on our faces.
by Reuven Reich
George Deek is an Arab-Israeli diplomat. In 2018, Deek was appointed Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan. He is the first Israeli Arab Christian to become an ambassador. Deek grew up in an Eastern Orthodox Christian family in the Ajami neighborhood of Jaffa, in a building where the other tenants included Muslims, Catholics, Jews and a Catholic priest of Jewish ancestry.[2][3] His father, who worked as a tax advisor,[3] was one of the leaders of the Christian community in Jaffa who served as chairman of the Orthodox Association, and was considered a well-known and popular figure in the city until in 2015 a square was inaugurated in his memory in Jaffa in the presence of Mayor Ron Huldai.[4] According to Deek, his grandparents fled to Lebanon for safety when the 1947–1949 Palestine war, having been told that the Jews would slaughter them if they remained in their homes, but expecting to return home once Arab armies defeated the Jews.[3] According to Deek, when the war ended, his grandparents felt that they had been “deceived”, and decided to return illegally to their home in Jaffa rather than remaining in Lebanon as refugees. Since reentering the country was illegal, Deek’s grandfather, an electrician, was arrested and jailed.
