Religious Kindness

 I have been thinking about kindness recently. How can we raise a generation which will have a normalized sense of kindness? For whom thinking of the feelings of another is second nature? I think that Judaism does something like that by teaching certain strange things.

Should we be kind to people? Sure, but halacha doesn’t start or stop there. Consider the laws of shilu’ach hakein (sending away a mother bird when raiding a nest for its eggs) and even oto v’et b’no, the law forbidding slaughtering a mother and child cow on the same day. These are designed to rein in the cruelty element of our nature and recognize how our actions have impact on other things.

Sure, you say, other things…like cows and birds? Well, if we codify concern over the feelings of animals, then we will become used to considering how our actions might cause pain to other people. Even the notion of shechting (and tza’ar ba’alei Chayim on the whole) is about reducing strain and pain for the animal. Why should we care? Kill the animal and be done with it, right? Somethings gotta get et. But then I think back to The Frisco Kid in which the inimitable Gene Wilder says, while chasing a chicken (and I paraphrase) “I don’t want to hurt you, I just want to eat you.” This would be the exact moment when kindness should not matter – when I want to use a resource that God provided, I still have to recognize its inherent soul and feelings and I have to be kind even while do what could easily become a cruel exercise of power.

But Judaism takes it a step further. On Friday nights, when we set the shabbat table, we put the challah on the table first and then we cover it before pouring the wine. Ask any 2^nd grader why, and he or she will probably mention some notion of “so that, when we make the blessing over the wine first, the bread won’t be shamed – placed first but eaten second.” I learned that when I was little and, admittedly, I never looked it up to see if there is a source but as I grew older, I realized that the story is weird. Does my challah have feelings? And not just the basic perception of pain when I cut it, but an embarrassment at a perceived slight or social faux pas!

But if we teach children this lesson before they have the sensibility to look at it and say “wait, what?” then we will accustom them to considering, even in their intentional and proper acts with supposedly inanimate objects, that there is a power we have, a power to hurt even when we don’t want to. We teach care and care leads to kindness. We need to say thank you to automatic doors. We need to avoid knocking over the traffic cone. We need to see that we share our space with “things” and our responsibility to be civil includes these things – not because they need it, but because we need to engrain positive habits into our every moment. Kindness must be intertwined into our being.

That said, I have also been wondering about a potential tension between two halachic mandates.

We have the idea of “danl’chaf z’chut” – to judge favorably and assume the best, not worst in people or situations. Don’t jump to negative conclusions.

We also have the idea of “lo teetein michshol” don’t place a stumbling block before a blind person (don’t create an unfair challenge or a temptation which might lead someone else to doing something wrong or being unable to do something right).

Don’t they contradict? If I judge everyone favorably, then I will suspect no one a priori as being, for example a thief. But if I put all of the jewelry away before my guest arrives then I have decided that I’m worried she or he will be tempted to steal (which is not judging anyone favorably) so I remove the valuables so as to avoid creating a stumbling block which might entice people to sin.

So which is it? Do I think people are potential thieves or do I believe that people are good and won’t steal?

I’m sure that there are subtleties regarding the implementation of these broad rules and granular discussions about when each one applies and how, but the underlying thinking still lends itself to the question, do we think that the nature of mankind is inherently prone to fail (thus we don’t tempt) or prone to succeed (as we judge all people favorably). Are we being kinder by removing temptation or by assuming that people are good?

This does lead to the old medrashic concern about how kindness is not always expressed as niceness (one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel the kind). How do we teach that kindness is not in opposition to justice and not always synonymous with mercy?