A Life of Compassion

Friends often ask me why I attend Torah Study every Saturday morning. Why am I reading a book written thousands of years ago, with a masculine God I don’t believe in and rules that make no sense for the way we live today? My response is that I read it for the rules that do make sense, the timeless values that will help me be my best self. My feelings are captured perfectly by Rabbi Michael Strassfeld in his book, Judaism Disrupted. A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st. Century.  “The purpose of Torah,” he says, “Is to encourage us and remind us to strive to live a life of compassion, loving relationships, and devotion to our ideals.”

Today I had an opportunity to reflect on this purpose when I stopped at an intersection where a woman was standing on the median with a sign, “Homeless. Anything Helps.” Unfortunately, this scene has become common in my home town. I now recognize the man who asks for help at the exit from the shopping center where I sometimes stop for Starbucks, and others who beg at traffic lights near the center of the city. Until today, I have never given to any of them. “I have no singles,” I rationalize (as though I can’t afford to give larger bills). “The light will turn red and I can’t hold up the cars behind me.” I think of all the ways I already support shelters and food pantries and I avert my eyes.

But today I encountered this woman on the way home from Torah Study and I couldn’t pass her without thinking of the mitzvah, or commandment, of Tzedakah. I have a moral obligation to give. And so, without judgement, without wondering how she would use it, but with compassion in my heart for whatever circumstances brought her to be begging for help, I lowered my window, looked her in the eye, and gave her a few dollars.

I can’t say that I will repeat this every time, at every corner. But I will continue to be an advocate and to give to organizations that not only shelter and feed but address the root causes of homelessness. In another book I have been reading, Awakenings: American Jewish Transformations in Identity, Leadership and Belonging, Rabbi Joshua Stanton and Rabbi Benjamin Spratt talk about “harnessing Jewish tradition to realize the human power for good in an increasingly complicated and fractured world.”  

That is why I will continue to study Torah, searching for ways to realize my own power for good.