Kindness With Pleasure

Kindness With Pleasure

This Tuesday ( 3 Tammuz/ July 9) marks the Rebbe’s 30th yahrtzeit.

I will be joining tens of thousands of people who will be visiting the Rebbe’s resting place on his yahrtzeit.

Traditionally, the Jewish people have visited the gravesites of our righteous leaders to pray for our needs and align with our soul’s voice.

It would be my honor to include you and your family in my prayers.

Please text me at 360–326–5922 with your name (and mother’s name, as is traditional to include in prayers).

Even prior to taking on his leadership role, the Rebbe compiled a book called “Day to Day”. Each day’s message offers a profound life perspective. Yesterday’s message, feels like an ideal one to share, leading up to the Rebbe’s yahrtzeit, that gives us a window into his paradigm of healthy soul living.

It is a message from a previous Rebbe (the Tzemach Tzedek) who told his son, that “For helping someone in his livelihood, even to earn just 70 kopeks (a small, low-value Russian coin) on a calf, all the gates to the Heavenly Chambers are open for him.

This was follow up to a story that he had experienced. He shared that he was on the way to the synagogue when someone asked him for a loan, being that it was market day and he could then buy and sell something to earn a small profit.

The Rebbe asked the fellow to come back after the prayers, and he continued on to the synagogue. Once he got there, he suddenly realized that the poor fellow needed this loan now, so the Rebbe returned home, got some money, sought out the fellow with great difficulty, gave him the money and then went on to pray.

The son with whom he shared this message, years later repeated it to his son (both were Rebbe’s of the Chabad movement, grandfather and father to the previous Rebbe) and added: “One should really know the route to the Heavenly Chambers, but actually it is not crucial. You only need the main thing — to help another wholeheartedly, with sensitivity, to take pleasure in doing a kindness to another.”

That one sentence sums up the ultimate goal of a fulfilled life.

The goal of every Jewish teaching and of every mitzvah, is to get in touch with, identify with and align ourselves with our G-dly soul- and to live a life that is guided by and sanctified by the convictions of that voice.

In Chassidic teachings we are told that we all share the same soul, and that it is only our bodies and ego consciousness that separates us. That said, being able to take full pleasure in doing a kindness for another, is the ultimate soul living.

We can work on this from the inside-out, by getting to know our soul and allowing for more of it to express itself. The natural consequence of that will be pleasurable acts of loving kindness to our fellow.

Or we can strengthen our soul from the outside-in, by doing kindness even when it’s not a total pleasure.

Slowly but surely, kindness will become a habit, and we’ll find that it is indeed our soul’s natural state.

Either way you go about it, let’s honor the Rebbe and our soul by making it a goal.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom.