Secrets of Kindness: A Journey among Good People

By Asnat Greenberg

“When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.”
(William Arthur Ward)

Who are the good people? What are their acts of giving? What is their inner world? What do they think about money and power? What kinds of people do they respect? What are their dreams?

Secrets of Kindness deals with these and other questions.

This book is the story of a journey through the world of altruism. It is a fascinating mosaic of interviews with good people – religious and secular; young and old; people who have come from great deprivation, leading them to change and growth; and others who absorbed the compassion in their parents’ home which became part of their heritage. All of them are people of kindness.

These inspiring people are great teachers. It is worthwhile noting their insights, their perceptions of life, and the way they relate to those around them.

This collection of stories forms an impressive and inspiring document showing the human spirit at its best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Asnat Greenberg
• Release date: Sep 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301068036

Asnat Greenberg

Asnat Greenberg is a writer, an artist who works with iron, and a former senior economist at the Bank of Israel. She is married, has three children, and lives in Jerusalem, Israel. Her book can be found at: http://www.secretsofkindness.com/ Her art web-site is: www.helen-and-asnat.com Email address: [e-mail]

Book preview

Secrets of Kindness

A Journey among Good People

by Asnat Greenberg

The names and places of residence of the interviewees

have been changed in order to maintain their privacy

Copyright 2012 by Asnat Greenberg

Smashwords Edition

To my children Shira, Ram, and Uri

And to my niece, Tali

"This is the time to start educating the heart"

the Dalai Lama

Preface

Four years ago, I left a good, stable job as a senior economist at the Bank of Israel. I left after 20 years of employment for what I thought would be my new calling in life: art.

By chance, I had started to dabble in art six years ago, together with my good friend Helen. I had no knowledge or education in the field, except for my lifelong interest in design. Life brought us together and I jumped in with my characteristic enthusiasm, dragging the sensitive and talented Helen after me. She had been creating her art for many years in her own private sphere without any aspirations of public recognition.

My surprisingly rapid connection to art taught me just how unexpected life can be, and how swiftly and acutely some changes in life can occur. If someone had told me several years ago that I would leave my profession as an economist to go into art, I would have been hard-pressed to believe him. That experience enabled me to open myself up again to yet more acute changes that I would undergo later on.

We showed our work at several exhibitions in Israel and other countries, and we greatly enjoyed working together. I left the Bank of Israel with the certainty that I was about to conquer the world and that life would once again be full of interest and creative joy. But despite the modicum of success that we enjoyed, the world was spiraling down into an economic recession, which really stymied our ability to promote our art and led me into a period of idleness.

Slowly, with the decline in my art activities, a large vacuum began to form within me. I searched for ways to fulfill myself. That emptiness and the accompanying sense of dissatisfaction and boredom motivated me to look within myself and seek what Amalia – a wise spiritual advisor whom I had found in my search for meaning and interest in my life – called my deepest desire.

And so I began to seek my deepest desire. I asked myself what exactly I wanted to do. The most important word in this context is exactly. I knew that I didn’t want to return to the world of economics. I knew that I wanted to help others, but I didn’t know precisely how or in what way.

At one of my meetings with Amalia – and I don’t remember exactly how it came up – I was talking about the fact that hope is very important to human beings and should be reinforced. At the end of that meeting, Amalia asked me to think about how people could be connected to hope.

In the days that followed, I thought mainly about that. How can people be connected to hope?

While writing these lines, I opened my notebook and read what I had written at the time. I wrote that hope is the belief that people are basically good; that hope is an engine and that it leads to action; that the way to connect people to hope is to encourage them to recognize their abilities and to cultivate within them the understanding that failure also plays a role. But I still had no idea what I wanted to do. What, exactly, I wanted to do.

And then, by chance, I happened upon Mitch Albom’s book, Have a Little Faith. By the middle of the book, I knew what I wanted to do.

Mitch Albom has written several books, the most well-known of which is Tuesdays With Morrie. In that book he documents his weekly meetings with Morrie Schwartz, who was his professor at Brandeis University, who had contracted a terminal illness. In those meetings, which went on for seven months, Morrie taught his last course – The Meaning of Life. The relationship that grew between the two changed Albom’s life and mode of thinking.

Have a Little Faith is Mitch Albom’s latest book. This book also describes meetings with spiritual teachers – Two of them – One, Albert Lewis, the rabbi of the community in which he lived as a child; and the other, Henry Covington, once a drug dealer and convicted criminal who later became the pastor of a black church in Detroit that also served as a shelter for the homeless.

When I reached the middle of the book, which I read with bated breath, I knew how to connect people to hope. I also knew what I wanted to do: to disseminate stories about good people – about their acts of benevolence and, beyond that, about who they are: what makes them happy, what saddens them, what they envy, what they think about money and power, are they forgiving, what kinds of people they respect, what are their dreams, and much more. When I reached the end of the book, I smiled to myself upon reading his last five words. They were: I’m in love with hope.

Chava’s story

I went to Chava’s house, located in one of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods of Jerusalem. I entered the small apartment, which was in need of paint and furnished simply with old pieces of furniture that had seen better days. A very heavy, ultra-Orthodox woman wearing a wig and very little makeup received me. Things she said during the course of the conversation indicated she was not healthy and had been in pain for a long time. The conversation with her flowed immediately. She opened her heart to me and spoke frankly about everything: her activities, her past, her values and her outlook.

Chava performs a wide range of volunteer activities to benefit others, which I can’t enumerate here because I promised her that I would conceal her identity. What I can say is that she opens her home to all, and needy people eat at her table on a daily basis. She usually doesn’t know them. They can be ultra-Orthodox or secular, Jewish or non-Jewish – if they need a meal, her door is open to them. Chava explained to me simply, When you go to the grocery store, you buy for five people, and when I go to the grocery store, I buy for 50 people.

While I was in her home on a weekday morning, there was a lot of activity going on around us the whole time. People entered the home and left it. When I asked about one of them, an adolescent, she explained that he had been abused by his parents, things had deteriorated even further, and now he was coming and going from her house.

Every Sabbath Chava cooks the same amount of food. She never knows how many people will be eating at her table. She says, I made an agreement with God. When I have a lot of people, he expands my pots, and when there are only a few people, he shrinks them. For example, on the Sabbath before my visit, some 70 people dined at her table for the three Sabbath meals. She says the food always suffices for all of them.

I tried to comprehend the source of this kindness – where did it come from? No one knows how to educate, Chava told me. You have to set an example.

I wanted to understand the example that Chava had had, and I asked her to tell me where she grew up. When Chava told me the story of her childhood, I understood.

Chava’s parents had four biological children and seven adopted children. These eleven children grew up in a one-and-a-half room apartment. I asked Chava how they lived in such crowded conditions, and her reply was, Easily and happily. Every night we spread mattresses all over the house and in the mornings we piled them up into one big pile. At night, the entire apartment was covered in mattresses, even the hallway leading to the bathroom, and anyone who went to the bathroom during the night stepped on everyone along the way, but no one woke up. Everyone continued sleeping perfectly. Her parents did not suffice with that. They also spent time helping others. Chava says that when she and her siblings observed the traditional Jewish seven days of mourning for the death of their parents, many people whom the children did not know and had never heard of came to pay their respects. Those people told them about the countless acts of kindness that their parents had performed in secret. Chava’s biological siblings also adopted children and are now involved in significant activities benefitting others.

I asked Chava about other people she had met in her life whom she considers spiritual teachers aside from her parents, and she said that these teachers are characters from Hassidic stories. When she reads about the deeds of the great men from that generation, she aspires to be like them. Chava, of course, has never met these rabbis face to face. The encounter between them is spiritual.

I liked the financial explanation she gave me about her activities on behalf of others. I believe, she said, that I am God’s banker. I save, but I transfer the interest to others. And she added, Giving doesn’t end with the act itself. The impact continues indefinitely. My parents helped the children they adopted, and those children now have children and grandchildren of their own. They continue to reap the rewards of these deeds to this day. It’s like buying stock, an investment for an unlimited period.

I asked her about formative events in her life. She told me that several years ago, she had been declared clinically dead. She remembered that she was in a warm and pleasant place with her mother (who was no longer alive). When they brought her back to life after 45 minutes of resuscitation attempts, she remembers that she didn’t want to come back. She wanted to go back there.

Did that event change your outlook on life? I asked.

Yes, she replied. It changed me. I understood that in one moment I could lose everything, and in another moment I could gain everything. And that’s how I see life now. Since that event, I can feel others more and diminish myself more in relation to them.

Chava explained that the main thing in helping others is the ability to diminish oneself, to step into the shoes of the other and to sense what he wants. What does it matter what we want for the other person and what we think? she asked. Have we experienced what he experienced? Are we living the life that he lives? We must never look down on anyone. Everyone has a role to play in the world and every person was created by God. I view every person as God’s creation and, for me, that means that every person has a role to play in this world. Every person, even the worst, must be given a chance to repent. And I don’t mean repentance in the religious sense but returning to be a good person. She told me that in her parents’ house, it was forbidden to say that someone was ugly. Every person was created by God.

She says that her actions give her a deep sense of satisfaction. If I don’t do these things, I get depressed, she said. I’m the happy one for giving. Giving makes the giver very happy. It makes you want to give more. When she spoke about her children, she said that they and her husband, were full partners in the endeavor and that the children have greater emotional strength as a result of what they have been exposed to.

What irritates you? I asked.

Seeing evil. Narrow-mindedness. Those things really bother me. Really. I can’t accept them. A person can’t be happy if he compares what he has with others. Then he’ll just want more and more. Be content with what you have. Chava doesn’t define herself as an ascetic. Absolutely not. She says that sometimes she likes to buy herself a thing or two.

What makes you envious?

She thought for a long time. I saw that she was considering and trying to find a genuine answer. In the end, she said that she didn’t envy anyone, but when she meets someone whom she perceives to be spiritually more advanced, she admits that she might be a bit envious. But, she added, not in the sense of jealousy, but in the sense that I have something to aspire to.

And what scares you?

Here the answer came