A World Built on Kindness

“I said: A world of kindness will be built; in the heavens You set Your faithfulness.” Opening Picture a young married man who wakes up in the morning and feels like he is fighting. He fights to make a living. He fights for peace at home. He fights even for one hour of rest. He prays, and there is no answer. He works, and things never open up. And quietly he starts to ask himself: What am I doing wrong? It is a good question. But the answer may surprise you. First Step: “A World Built on Kindness” Is a Basic Law, Not a Slogan The verse says: “I said: A world of kindness will be built.” Notice what it does not say. It does not say the world received kindness. It says the world will be built on kindness. The building, the spreading out, the flowing are all kindness. All of it is giving. This is not only a moral idea. It is a basic law of reality. Gravity pulls everything downward. In the same way, all true existence flows outward. It flows from the center to the edges, from nothing into something, from the giver to the receiver. The Zohar, the classic book of Jewish mysticism, speaks of two pillars: the giver and the receiver. The heart of the existence of all the worlds is the Giver. That is Hashem, blessed be He, who gives everything its existence. When a person acts out of giving, he is, so to speak, “swimming with the current” of creation. When a person acts only out of selfishness, he is swimming against the current. All he thinks about then is “What will I get? What is mine?” And whoever fights the laws of nature loses in the end. That is why our Sages said: “The more possessions, the more worry.” This is not a punishment for being wealthy, heaven forbid. It is a true description of what happens when a person lives only inside himself. He is so busy guarding, controlling and counting that there is no joy and no flow. Second Step: Giving Is Not a Deal. It Is Getting in Line Here is the main point, and we need to look at it carefully. The Talmud teaches: “Give a tenth so that you will become rich.” Taken simply, it means exactly what it says: give a tenth of your income to charity, and you will become rich. But we might think it is a deal: “I give one tenth, and Hashem gives me nine parts back.” As if it were some kind of market, some kind of trade. That is not the precise inner meaning. The deeper explanation is this. The blessing is already there. Abundance flows from Above all the time. The problem is not a lack of abundance from Above. The problem is a lack of a vessel down below. The story of the prophet Elisha and the wife of Obadiah shows this as clearly as anything can. When the jars ran out, the oil stopped. The oil stands for the abundance. It did not stop on its own. It stopped because there was no vessel left to receive it. Our giving creates the vessel. That means charity, helping others, and love for every Jew. Giving widens the heart. It breaks down the closedness inside us. It brings us into tune with the “frequency” of creation. So when a person gives, he does not make the blessing come into being. He simply turns himself into a channel. Through that channel the blessing, which was there all along, can finally flow. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, wrote this in one of his letters. The Tanya is the classic book of Hasidic thought. Charity opens the channel and connects a person to the root of abundance above. That is why King Solomon wrote: “Whoever is kind to the poor is lending to Hashem.” A person who gives to the poor is not giving from what is “his.” He is, so to speak, lending to Hashem, because he is acting inside that same divine current of giving. There is more. Clinging to Hashem, becoming one with the way of the Giver, is itself the reward. As our Sages teach: “Just as He is compassionate, so you be compassionate.” When you give, you are not only “getting a blessing.” You become like the Giver, and that connects you to the true root of life.