Loving Kindness In New Jersey
Weingart, Devra
LOVING KINDNESS IN NEW JERSEY DEVRA WEINGART Last month, we published an interview with Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People. There, Rabbi Kushner dealt mainly with the...
...Money was allocated to reimburse anyone who could cook but who could not afford the added expense...
...They expected, for example, that they could help out when illness made it difficult for a homemaker to shop and cook for the family...
...With time, the needs grew as well...
...All-encompassing by definition, it could be given by and to rich and poor alike...
...If we did not always know who had brought our dinner, we did know that there were strong, loving hands reaching out to us...
...The level of demands was so high that even with the devoted group of people who had helped thus far, we could not manage everything...
...G'milut hassadim, the bestowal of loving-kindness, was considered by the rabbis to be even more important than tz'dakah, charity...
...The Mitzvah Corps cooked meals and brought them to her family...
...We will never be the same people we were before, most of all because of the loss of our beloved Jennifer—but also because of what we have seen in people, what we have learned of the power and beauty of g'milut hassadim...
...A month went by before we left the hospital, a month of pain, fear, and desperate attempts to grasp at threads of hope...
...During this month, family and friends cared for our two younger children, Caren and Amy, at home...
...People rallied in ways and to a degree we could not have imagined...
...The volunteers relieved the woman's husband, making these trips for two years...
...From these names, the Mitzvah Corps chairperson organized a daily schedule, notifying each person, who in turn called us to make arrangements to meet at the appropriate time on a given day...
...Nothing could change Jennifer's fate...
...For each treatment she had to be taken to a hospital in a nearby town and picked up several hours later...
...Jennifer, formerly independent and helpful, had become physically almost totally dependent...
...Leaving them without preparation or precedent, I lived at the hospital with Jennifer while my husband divided his time between hospital and home, trying to sustain both his legal practice and his fragmented family...
...Avot: 1:2) G'milut hassadim is unlimited quantitatively, whereas when giving charity "one should not 'squander' more than a fifth of one's possessions on good works...
...The bad things that happen to good people raise problems not only for the good people, but also for their neighbors—that is, for the communities of which they are a part...
...Cancer does not wait for its victims to gain the strength and the knowledge with which to cope—nor do the needs of small children...
...Similarly, nothing can change our feelings of loss and grief...
...oasis of happiness...
...A social service worker contacted the Mitzvah Corps on behalf of a man in a nursing home...
...The rabbi's secretary, a Temple member, became seriously ill and was put on a dialysis three times a week...
...and by acts of loving-kindness...
...The oasis lasted briefly...
...These were the questions we faced on November 23, 1979, when we learned the results of our eight-year-old child's surgery...
...What words are there...
...Each day began with time-consuming rituals...
...What help can there be when you have just been told that your child has cancer...
...And it was then that the Mitzvah Corps of our Synagogue, Temple Beth Tikvah in Wayne, New Jersey, joined with us...
...When we returned home from the hospital, the help the Mitzvah Corps gave was varied and unlimited...
...There were days when we did not even know who had brought the food, so unobstrusive were the people who came to our home...
...They therefore established a system for providing meals...
...He was recuperating from a stroke and was alone...
...Caring even to note the children's tastes in food, "meals on wheels" kept arriving in disposable aluminum containers, often warm and ready to serve...
...During the Middle Ages in Europe groups called bikkur cholim holim developed...
...There, Rabbi Kushner dealt mainly with the personal crisis we confront when we encounter tragedy...
...When there was a emergency in the shtetl, an announcement was made in shul after the Torah was read...
...Another woman became incapacitated after breaking her leg...
...she died on November 5, 1980, nearly a year after her illness was diagnosed...
...home...
...Mitzvah Corps volunteers brought him Passover and Shabbat meals—and companionship as well...
...Thoughtful planning, shopping, preparing, all taken over by someone else...
...Women from the Mitzvah Corps visited her and brought meals to her "The world is sustained by three things . . . . by worship...
...These first loving deeds were carried out by the original committee of just four women...
...There is an historic precedent from Talmudic times for the Mitzvah Corps...
...How moved we were by the outpouring of support...
...Following in the tradition of g'milut hassadim, members of these groups visited and cared for sick people...
...They also planned to visit the sick, telling people through word and deed that there were others who cared...
...The mundane chores of home and family still had to be done...
...We were distraught, unnerved, unsure of what steps to take first...
...They decided to make themselves available to any Temple member who needed help and to do whatever was most needed...
...The need to cook, clean and wash clothes never disappears or diminishes in deference to emergencies...
...Although caring for Jennifer was of primary importance, we wanted to restore as much normal routine and loving care as possible to Caren and Amy, ages six and three...
...The Mitzvah Corps had been organized five years earlier by a Sisterhood president who wanted to encourage warmth and closeness among the members of our growing congregation...
...She stayed with us throughout the day, a friend offering conversation, diversion, encouragement and sympathetic understanding...
...As people were helped, they became eager in turn to give help...
...Volunteers signed sheets indicating days on which they would be available...
...How do you learn to switch abruptly from the small time stuff of bruises, colds and chicken pox to the big time...
...malaise, pain, and body malfunctions had been caused by the growth of a malignant tumor in her pelvis...
...Soon after the committee formulated its plans, a congregant was hospitalized with a viral infection and high fever...
...Four or five times a week we made the trek to the hospital in New York City for chemotherapy and radiation, often returning late in the afternoon...
...In this way, the list of volunteers grew...
...Finally the day came when we were allowed to leave the hospital...
...It helped us take those first steps, it became an integral part of our family, it continued to tread the way throughout the long difficult days that followed...
...What help can there be when you have just been told that your child has cancer...
...If we felt that we were submerged in a sea of unbelievable, unrelenting problems, we also felt that there was a circle of warmth surrounding us...
...They also brought the flowers that had decorated the bima during Shabbat to her hospital room...
...Our family and closest friends, the people the younger children felt most secure with, were always willing to care for Caren and Amy, but we needed people outside this immediate circle to help in other ways...
...People were then able to organize themselves to help one another...
...Jennifer's Devra Weingart is a free-lance writer living in New Jersey...
...Her hope was that mutual help and emotional support of one another would foster such feelings...
...That person became the pair of extra hands that was essential, parking the car, pushing the wheelchair, supplying tissues or adjusting blankets during the tedious drive home following chemotherapy...
...The Mitzvah Corps of Temple Beth Tikvah began with a volunteer committee of four women...
...These communal associations were centered around the synagogue...
...They made specific plans for situations they thought would be likely to arise...
...Another kind person brought a cooked meal to our home whenever we were scheduled to spend the day at the hospital...
...But I am happy to know that she was able to experience the goodness of people and to know how much they cared during her short life...
...And how do you span the two worlds in which your several children are living, the one of health and the one of illness, so that no one is left physically unattended or emotionally starved...
...Below, the story of how one such community, following an ancient tradition, reaches out in times of need...
...The combined joys of Jennifer's homecoming, Shabbat, and the first night of Chanukah enveloped us in an...
...Jennifer, unable to walk since the operation, came home in a wheel chair, surrounded by ominous looking medical supplies...
...by Torah We had to face the reality of everyday life...
...But we, too, know that people care, and that has been a sustaining factor during this time in which we have been and still are trying to recover...
...But neither the wheelchair nor the medicines diminished the joy we felt as we visualized ourselves as a family at home together once again...
...As in the days of the shtetl, the president of the congregation made an announcement during Shabbat, explaining the need for a person to accompany us on our trips to the hospital and outlining the time commitment involved...
...Manifest through personal service, or giving of oneself, it is mentioned in the Mishnah as one of the three things that sustain the world: "The world is sustained by three things: by the Torah, by worship, and by loving deeds...
Vol. 1 • December 1981 • No. 7
