"May Your kindness, O Lord be upon us,
As we have hoped for you."
(Psalm 33:22)
"The world is built with chesed."
(Psalm 89:3)
Chesed is the first day of all creation, when lovingkindness was created. On this day God devised ultimate action: action with no cause, action that was lovingkindness. What a profound beginning!
How awe-inspiring to consider the implications of a universe whose ultimate impetus was the spontaneous and simultaneous creation and action of lovingkindness. And so I am...and so we are. We are all created from chesed. We are all called by chesed to uncover the divine sparks hidden in all of creation—with each breath, each step, and each act.
Chesed is the deepest and purest form of giving imaginable. It refers to acts of lovingkindness that are “unconditional and unmotivated” (Leiberman). Chesed is to give with no connection to desired outcome or recognition. True selflessness is called for in order to embody chesed.
Even more profound is the way in which chesed cuts through all structures of social, moral, and financial status or class. Anyone can give chesed, and anyone can receive it. It breaks through the imbalanced and finite nature of charity.
In his book God is a Verb, Rabbi David A. Cooper describes the distinction between charity and chesed. “Charity can be done only with one’s possessions, while lovingkindness can be done with one’s person and one’s possessions. ... Charity can be given only to the poor, while lovingkindness can be given to both the rich and the poor. ... Charity can be given to the living only, while lovingkindness can be done for both the living and the dead.” (Cooper, p. 197).
Cooper goes on to explain, “In many ways, charity is simpler, cleaner, and easier than lovingkindness. Once we hand it over, we are done with it. However, there is never an end to acts of lovingkindness” (Cooper, p. 197). In this way, chesed challenges humankind to live by the holiest of moral compasses. It is a challenge echoed in the acts of Jesus and the Buddhist teaching of boddishatva: Love all things at all times.
Where we came from is Love, and Love is where we are going. No less so, underneath the dust of the shattered vessel of our universe, the divine spark holds the secret that love is also where we are. For what is infinite is also present—right here and now.
So how do we break through the layers of dust and clay that obscure this truth, this divine spark within? By recreating, again and again, that original action of spontaneous lovingkindness.
True faith lies in believing that one tiny act matters. “The Zohar …asserts that 'a person should always imagine that the fate of the whole world depends upon his or her actions.’ ” (Cooper, p. 198). One warm gaze, one gentle hand, one loving prayer, one kind word unleashes one more piece of divinity back into the universe, and the glow of eternal love grows ever brighter.
Awe is inspired when contemplating an all-loving creator who entrusted humanity with such a lofty yet beautifully simple mission of love. It is humbling when the individual, uncovering his or her divine spark, glimpes the awesome inferno of love to which that spark belongs. God resides in these sparks, and so resides in us. Through our acts of lovingkindness, these sparks are set free and God is realized in ourselves and in each other.
This is chesed realized. This is our task.
Let us do it rightly, wholly and eternally.
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Works Cited
The Complete Tanach (Judaica Press, On-line edition) Book of Psalms, www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/63255/jewish/The-Bible-with-Rashi...
Rabbi Shimon Leiberman, "The World is Built on Kindness", www.Aish.com.
Rabbi David A. Cooper, God is a Verb (New York, Riverhead Books, 1997).