“Kindness matters,” is what the new sign on my door reads. It was put there by my wife Ashirah on her mission to bring kindness to the world. Underneath the motto are slips of paper to take with you with words of encouragement like, “you are a kind person,” “you make me laugh,” “you inspire me to be better.”
Examples of kindness abound this month at CSS. You see them in the picture of a tree in our religious school wing with sticky notes of acts of kindness our students performed in the past one hundred days. You see them in the chesed rocks in our outside garden, organized by CSS member Alexa Zapia as part of her Rocks of Unity project. And, you see them in the smiling portrait of our beloved former Cantor Susan Wehle hanging in our open area.
Susan’s kindness reverberates in our community even nine years after her passing. She spent each day of her life trying to make our lives easier, brighter, and more full of music and love. Through interfaith gatherings, chaplaincy visits, and joyous service celebrations Susan embodied chesed, loving kindness. It oozed from every fiber of her body. Here at CSS, her spirit lives on in our very name, Shir Shalom, a Song of Peace. While not named after her directly, our community’s name epitomizes our former spiritual leader’s drive to sing Shalom.
In this week’s Torah portion, Terumah, the People of Israel are asked to give toward the building of the Tabernacle not out of a sense obligation, but because they want to. As Moses is instructed at the beginning of the portion, “speak to the Israelites and let them take for Me a portion from every person whose heart motivates them.” The donation, or charity, must come from those “yidbenu libo,” whose heart literally makes the donation. In doing so, they ensure the Tabernacle is constructed out of love. If only all of our communities could be built out of such an intention. Then kindness would truly abound in the world.