Zlotta was a destitute refugee, when she reached America after World War II. She was placed with the Weinbaum family in Seattle and began the difficult adjustment to a new life. The hardest part was when the first Shabbos came in and, with it, the realisation that her family was truly gone.
After the Friday night meal, Max Weinbaum and his sons sat down to learn and the girls started cleaning up.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Zlotta asked Mrs Weinbaum.
“Yes, please take a dish towel and dry the dishes.”
Zlotta later said that was the biggest chessed the Weinbaums did for her because it made her feel that she was truly a member of the family.
We read in this week’s Parshah about the Mitzvah of doing chessed, of lending money to the poor. The verse reads, “if you lend money to My people”. Rashi makes the observation that this is one of the three cases in the Torah where the word “if” means “when”! Assisting the poor with a loan is not optional, but actually obligatory.
The question that remains however is why then does the Torah write it as if it is a optional Mitzvah?
The answer provides for us a framework within which all chessed should be performed. When it comes to Mitzvahs that involve dealing with people we must make sure that the recipient doesn’t feel like one! Yes we perform one of the commandments of Hashem when we help the poor but we mustn’t make the person feel like he is the ‘object of our mitzvah’. The pauper is not like a piece of matzah, with whom we discharge our obligation to be kind. Chessed must be done with a ‘voluntary’ attitude, hence the term ‘if’ is used because although you have to perform acts of kindness the attitude must not be so.
In the same vein a doctor told me the following thought. The Medresh describes the Jewish nation as having three unique qualities, “compassionate, bashful and benevolent”. It seems like the order is wrong; compassionate and benevolent describe me doing something towards someone – ‘external’, whereas being bashful is a trait that is between a person and himself – ‘internal’?
However he answered in the name of Rabbi Paysach Krohn that in truth all three qualities are ‘external’. When I provide compassionate and benevolent acts to someone else I must remember that the recipient is bashful. I must see to it that he doesn’t feel that he is the ‘nebach’. A doctor in particular must remember this because his job is almost entirely in dealing with people and their problems! This is why Zlotta was so touched at being asked to help wash the dishes. It enabled her to not feel like she was a nebach – a mere recipient of the Weinbaum’s chessed.
Good Shabbos
Yaakov